Doctors are transmitting electrocardiograms, or maps of heart activity, over their BlackBerries at the two hospitals in the District to help diagnose heart attack victims more effectively.
Within the next year, patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center will be able to use their own smartphones to help speed up their diagnoses, said Dr. Divya Shroff, the center’s associate chief of staff for informatics.
“We are dealing traditionally with a patient population that has a lot of heart attacks,” said Shroff, a lead physician in developing the program. And time is precious when caring for heart attack victims, she said.
“When people have a certain type of heart [activity], they need to get to the cardiac catheterization lab [for surgery] within 90 minutes” to prevent permanent damage, Shroff said.
“If the cardiologist is out to dinner and a patient needs their EKG analyzed, that doctor would traditionally have to get to a fax machine,” she said. But with the new technology, the hospital wirelessly sends a digital image of the EKG graph to cardiologists’ BlackBerries so they can determine the type of care needed from any location around the world.
George Washington University Hospital was the first hospital in the nation to test out the technology in December 2008. The Veterans Affairs Medical Center followed suit in January with a testing period and seven months later, each of their 15 cardiologists is equipped with a programmed BlackBerry.
Cardiologists can forward the image to another doctor for a second reference, communicate their diagnoses back to the hospital and even write prescriptions via the smartphones.
The software — which cost VA about $75,000 — was developed by mVisum, a medical technology company. Within the next year, Shroff wants to include patients in the telemedical phenomenon. She envisions patients using their mobile devices to take surveys and watch educational videos while waiting for treatment, she said.
But David Autry, a spokesman for Disabled Veterans of America, worries the BlackBerry could replace the doctor.
“I would want to make sure any device used [to survey patients’ health conditions] is not being used as a replacement for doctors or physicians,” he said.
Michael Houston, spokesman for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said his organization is “just learning” of this technology and has not yet done enough research to comment.
Shroff said the hospital is using BlackBerries because it’s the only smartphone “from a security standpoint” approved to work within the government system. But she hopes to find a way to include iPhone users at some point.
Shroff eventually wants to make all kinds of tests, as well as a patient’s history, available on smartphones.
“The technology is there,” she said. “We just have to take the next step.”
