exactly what kind of problems a patient has while he or she is en route to the hospital. It’s obviously technically challenging—ever hit a cell phone dead spot while driving through a tunnel?—but the payoff could be big. Doctors know that a heart attack patient suffers damage to the heart muscle every minute. “By saving time, you save muscle,” Pollack says.
The latest iteration of the Physio-Control system seeks to save time through a number of ways, Pollock says. One new feature, called Lifenet Consult, is an iPhone app that allows physicians to do fast consults for EMS workers and hospital staffs on their mobile phones. Another key feature allows a hospital IT administrator to essentially set up a code with a single push to notify all the necessary hospital staff via text message, pager, or e-mail that they ought to get ready for a patient on the way with a certain kind of prognosis based on the ECG readout. The system is supposed to enable hospital IT administrators to manage a fleet of devices with automatic software updates, and status alerts on things like whether a battery is low.
The key piece of data being sent around is called a 12-lead ECG, a standard waveform readout on heart condition, which the AirStrip app is supposed to display with sharp resolution to help a cardiologist with a trained eye.
AirStrip has already garnered some precious attention for its medical apps designed for the iPhone, which can be used by obstetricians to monitor fetal heartbeats. It will be interesting to see how quickly cardiologists and emergency medical personnel adopt the new technology, and whether it can actually improve outcomes for victims of cardiac arrest or heart attack. Physio-Control plans to continue rolling out new updates to its wireless data infrastructure, putting out new updates about once a year, Pollock says.
As for the day when wireless data becomes truly seamless and two-way between the ambulance and the hospital? “It’s probably two to three years away,” Pollock says.
