Find the Right Hospital For Stroke Patients

    The scope of the project is to design an iPhone application to aid EMS teams in deciding which hospital to take time critical patients (specifically stroke patients) that can yield the shortest onset-to-needle time (time it takes from a patient falling ill to receiving treatment). As proven, the time it takes for stroke patients to receive treatment has a negative correlation with the functionality of the brain after treatment. Thus, minimizing onset-to-needle times can greatly increase patient recovery and daily life after a stroke.

    Historically, only door-to-needle time has been targeted as a source of efficiency improvement, since this is a factor that hospitals can control. However, with the development of this iPhone application, efficiency can be increased even before patients arrive at a hospital. EMS teams will use the application by first deciding whether the patient is having a stroke (based on the Cincinatti Stroke Scale) and inputting the severity of the stroke (based on the LA Motor Score). Since only some hospitals are specialized for treating certain levels of stroke severity, and often may be overcrowded, to save patient transfer time and other inefficiencies, this application will combine (1) the shortest route (ideally considering traffic) and (2) door-to-needle times for each hospital in order to calculate which hospital and route will yield the shortest onset-to-needle time.

    EMS teams will then follow the route within the application in order to arrive at the fastest and most capable hospital for a certain stroke case.