• Programmable button speeds triage proces

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Thursday, March 24, 2022 22:30:44
    Programmable button speeds triage process for faster heart attack care
    One-click technology streamlines a key step in assessing patients
    presenting with chest pain

    Date:
    March 24, 2022
    Source:
    American College of Cardiology
    Summary:
    Shaving critical minutes off the time it takes to diagnose a heart
    attack and begin treatment could be as simple as the push of a
    button. Using a programmable button to page a phlebotomist for a
    blood draw reduced the time it took to identify patients suffering
    a heart attack by more than 11 minutes on average, in a new study.



    FULL STORY ========================================================================== Shaving critical minutes off the time it takes to diagnose a heart attack
    and begin treatment could be as simple as the push of a button. Using a programmable button to page a phlebotomist for a blood draw reduced the
    time it took to identify patients suffering a heart attack by more than
    11 minutes on average, in a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 71st Annual Scientific Session.


    ========================================================================== According to researchers, the study represents the first time programmable button technology -- designed to help consumers easily order products
    online - - has been applied in a medical setting.

    "Often in medicine you need a rapid response, but there are many processes
    that require numerous laborious steps that take time, and in the setting
    of a potential heart attack, time is muscle. The longer the wait, the
    more damage there is to the heart muscle and less chances for recovery,"
    said Milind R.

    Dhond, MD, medical director of cardiovascular medicine at NorthBay
    Healthcare in Fairfield, California, and the study's lead author. "This approach potentially can cut out many steps. It's using innovative
    technology in an innovative way by bringing together the technology and
    the application to improve the process." To diagnose a heart attack,
    doctors look at the level of troponin in the blood as an indicator of
    damage to the heart muscle. Drawing blood and sending it to the lab for analysis is integral to the process used to determine whether a heart
    attack is occurring before clinicians intervene to open the blocked
    artery.

    Researchers adapted the Internet of Things (IoT) button developed by
    Amazon Web Services to page an on-call phlebotomist for a blood draw
    whenever a patient arrived in the hospital's emergency department with
    chest pain. The device is a physical, handheld button that communicates wirelessly, triggering a pre- programmed process when pressed -- a
    process similar to the "Buy now with 1- click" option Amazon developed
    for its web-based product ordering system.

    Having the button handy allowed triage nurses to rapidly summon a
    phlebotomist for patients with chest pain while continuing the rest of
    the patient intake process.

    For the study, researchers compared the records of 2,098 patients
    who presented to the NorthBay emergency department with chest pain
    between January 2020 and April 2021, when the IoT button was in use,
    with records from 1,614 patients who presented to the same emergency
    department with chest pain in 2019 prior to the implementation of the
    button. The demographics and cardiovascular risk factors of the two
    groups were similar.



    ========================================================================== Analysis showed that use of the button significantly reduced the time
    it took to diagnose a heart attack by an average of 14%. The largest
    gains were in the period between the patient's arrival at the emergency department and when the nurse ordered a troponin test, which was reduced
    by an average of seven minutes after the button was implemented.

    Using the button also reduced the time between placing the order and
    having blood drawn by 2.5 minutes and the time between drawing blood and delivering the sample to the lab by about two minutes, on average. There
    was no significant difference in the time it took to receive lab results
    once the blood sample arrived at the lab for analysis.

    The total process from start to finish was about 11 minutes shorter after
    the IoT button was implemented, representing an increase in efficiency
    given that hospitals aim to begin interventions to open a blocked artery
    within 60 minutes or less after a patient arrives at the hospital with
    a heart attack.

    "We were pleasantly surprised to see quite a significant reduction in
    time just by introducing such a simple concept," Dhond said. "If you get
    the lab results sooner, you can admit the patient sooner or discharge
    them sooner." Dhond said that the approach should be scalable and cost effective for a variety of other time-sensitive areas of health care
    delivery, such as cardiac arrest and stroke treatment.

    The study was limited to a single medical center and used a retrospective analysis as a control, although researchers noted that the study's
    large sample size strengthens the conclusion that the button resulted in significant improvements. Researchers noted that the hospital's cardiac
    testing protocols did not change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,
    which emerged a few months after the button was implemented, and said
    it was unlikely that the pandemic had any effect on the study results.

    Dhond will present the study, "Novel Use of Amazon 1-Click Button to Significantly Reduce Time to Diagnosis of Acute Myocardial Infarction
    in Emergency Department Patients," on Saturday, April 2.


    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by American_College_of_Cardiology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


    ==========================================================================


    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220324104422.htm

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