Australian-based healthcare real-world feasibility study finds improved communication and faster patient care timelines when using Pulsara.
Bozeman, Mont., September 1, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, announced today the newly published British Medical Journal real-world feasibility study analyzing the effects of Pulsara on care team communication and acute stroke and STEMI patient treatment times. Titled “Real-world, feasibility study to investigate the use of a multidisciplinary app (Pulsara) to improve prehospital communication and timelines for acute stroke/STEMI care,” the study was conducted in Victoria, Australia with pre-hospital and within-hospital clinical teams. As a first-of-its-kind systematic analysis of Pulsara’s efficacy across the whole patient journey for treatment of stroke and STEMI, the study found that utilization of the platform resulted in significant patient treatment time improvements.
“Implementation of the Pulsara digital communication application resulted in faster metrics of the patient arriving at hospital and being at triage when Pulsara was used, as well as patient off ambulance stretcher times for both stroke and STEMI cases,” reported study authors Chris F. Bladin et al. “Hospital metrics for stroke cases also improved significantly with door-to-first medical review and door-to-CT completed more rapidly.”
With cardiovascular disease ranking as a leading cause of death and disability in Australia, the researchers identified prehospital notification to hospital teams and faster assessment and treatment as prerequisites for better outcomes. Nevertheless, the study reported that many healthcare systems are not yet set up for this kind of optimal communication or streamlined patient care.
“Interdisciplinary prehospital communication is however often fragmented with clinicians dispersed geographically, across health services and reliant on multiple separate communication systems, such as radio, phone and paging systems, for the one patient. This disjointed system leads to repetition of documenting clinical details, transmission of incorrect or out of date clinical information and subsequent treatment delays,” the study authors wrote.
Conducted over 12 months, the researchers sought to “undertake a real-world, pilot feasibility study and determine if a secure, digital communication app (Pulsara), operating both between and within health services, could improve the timelines for the different stages involved in the interdisciplinary processes of care for patients with suspected acute stroke or STEMI.” Numerous healthcare systems were involved in the study, including twenty-five ambulance organizations, two hospitals, and multiple clinical teams encompassing paramedics, emergency, stroke/neurology, cath lab clinicians, and radiologists. A total of 604 patients also participated — identified when suspected of acute stroke or STEMI by paramedics and ED clinicians. Moreover, the primary measurements included door-to-treatment for stroke and STEMI patients, with secondary evaluations around ambulance and hospital operations.
When utilizing Pulsara, the study found statistically significant improvements for patients with suspected stroke and STEMI, including shorter time between ambulance loaded and hospital arrival (23 minutes faster for STEMI patients, and 5 minutes faster in stroke cases), faster triage time (3 minutes faster for STEMI and 4 minutes faster for stroke patients), shorter times on the ambulance stretcher (5 minutes less in STEMI cases and 8 minutes less for stroke patients), and faster door-to-CT times (44 minutes faster).
“O