dr-exmedic.com

With the AHA making a big deal about door-to-balloon time for MIs, it’s only natural that hospitals have been scrambling to find ways to reduce that time.  One way to reduce that time is to get prehospital ECGs transmitted to the hospitals to allow the ED docs to call for the cath lab to be opened, and hospitals have been trying to encourage EMS providers to send in patients’ ECGs.  One solution has been to spring for new gear; just this month, one large facility bought the EMS service I volunteer for a set of cables that allow our monitors to fax an ECG via cell phone.  Other services have upgraded their monitors with Bluetooth for the same purpose.

However, there is a cheaper way.  Unfortunately, I had food in my mouth when I read the following lines, which I find completely hysterical:

Our out-of-hospital personnel use their personal cell phones to take a picture of a 12lead EKG which they believe represents ST segment elevation myocardial infarction and transmit it to a hospital e-mail account.  Upon notification by the out-of-hospital provider, the e-mail picture is then accessed by the emergency physician.

The authors thoughtfully provide a login which allows you to access a sample image.  As I expected, the image quality is sufficient for the viewer to diagnose MIs so obvious the machine can read them, but doesn’t seem quite good enough for subtle ECGs.  However, I do have to give them points for style and creativity.

Filed under: EMS, Emergency Medicine