What can food delivery apps teach us about prehospital workflow?

Ordering food using a mobile app is now easier than ever. When you place an order, you can see when your meal is being prepared. You get a notification if there is a delay. You even know how many minutes your pizza or burrito is from arriving at our doorstep and the name of the person delivering it.

On the other hand, for a time-sensitive condition like stroke, where delay in care can increase mortality and morbidity, relaying of information about the patient being transported to the hospital is hardly as precise.

Today you often have a better idea of what is going on with your pizza order than stroke teams do about their next patient. Seconds matter for a stroke patient, so having the team at the receiving hospital informed and ready to go can save lives.

What is prehospital workflow lacking?

EMS is the first medical contact for most acute stroke patients. But they face many challenges to share pertinent patient information with the ED and stroke teams to enable smooth patient care transitions.

Challenges arise due to:

• Multiple modes of communication
• No standardized approach for conveying patient information
• Limitations in existing technologies

A solution to improve stroke care coordination and collaboration

So, what’s needed for medical teams to overcome these obstacles? Simple, direct, standardized communication between EMS and hospital teams, for starters.

EMS will benefit from a solution that allows them to directly connect and communicate with the stroke specialist. This will also help the stroke team to get all the information they need from the EMS, allowing smooth patient care transitions.

Such a solution will help save time and save lives.

Learn more about The Rapid prehospital workflow solution

• The Rapid prehospital workflow solution
• Webinar: “Driving Patient Workflow Innovation,” a RapidAI clinical update at ASNR