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- Time is Life.
Time is Life.
The effects of pre-hospital and decentralized monitoring in rural areas
AI-driven diagnosis-monitoring helps cut down deaths by a stroke in the Himalayan foothills
Saving lives is what makes it important to use AI integrated diagnostics and monitoring systems in Health Care.
Across the world, Stroke is a leading cause of death, second only to ischemic heart disease diseases. According to the World Stroke Organization (WSO), 13.7 million new strokes occur each year and there are about 80 million stroke survivors globally. In India, as per the Health of the Nation’s State Report, we see an incidence rate of 119 to 152/100000 and has a case fatality rate of 19 to 42% across the country.
One of the biggest obstacles in Stroke Care is the lack of awareness of stroke symptoms and the late arrival of the patient, often at smaller peripheral hospitals, which are not equipped with the necessary scanning facilities and specialists, leading to a delay ineffective treatment.
A technology solution like qER (AI diagnostics platform) can reduce the time to diagnosis in case of emergencies like Stroke or trauma and boosts the confidence of the Stroke Unit, even in the absence of specialists. The qER platform can help Stroke neurologists in the Telestroke settings access great quality scans even on their smartphones and guide the treating doctors for thrombolysis and further management. Scaling up this technology to Stroke units and MSUs can empower peripheral hospitals to manage acute Stroke especially in LMICs.
Why is the point of care/diagnostics is important?
On a global scale, the healthcare industry is plagued by 3 things:
- High mortality rate of 40% during surgical procedures
- Patients being forced to stay in hospital for extended periods of time (average of 16 days) due to inadequate infrastructure
- Inability to diagnose & treat patients remotely and urgently during travel
Current traditional brain and spine injury diagnostic procedures, like MRI and CT, are time-consuming, emit radiation, expensive, and access to the equipment and the results are time-delayed (i.e. 30-70 minutes). Importantly, patients have to be transported (sometimes over long distances) and admitted to a hospital or specialized medical center (that has the equipment and highly qualified technical and medical personnel) before they can be diagnosed with Brain Trauma. The medical industry is beckoning a quick, reliable, and less expensive brain trauma diagnostic solution.
Head Injury (HI) is a leading cause of death and disability among the predominantly young population. Ten million cases of HI are estimated per year worldwide. Annually, within the United States, there are about 2 million emergency room visits for HI, roughly 575,000 admissions for brain trauma, nearly 52,000 deaths, and approximately 80,000 cases of severe long-term disability.1 About 10% of combat injuries sustained during conventional land warfare involve HI, including skull and brain traumas.
PONS is a modern way to diagnose patients. It gives doctors to access and monitors diagnostic imaging capability from the palm of their hand at the patient's side or thousands of miles away, simply by connecting to their computer. Like a cardiologist having immediate access to an electrocardiogram (ECG) during surgery--or like not being tied to the hospital lab for monitoring an ultrasound in pregnancy, PONS enables doctors to monitor and remain with their patients at all times. PONS provides superior image quality, all within a very compact wearable device, and can be used on its own or as a complementary tool for existing ultrasound systems.