New Telehealth App at Baystate to Improve Heart-attack Treatment Times

SPRINGFIELD —  Every second counts in getting immediate care at an emergency department when experiencing a STEMI heart attack. A STEMI heart attack is the most serious of all heart attacks, which can cause major damage to the heart without a quick response.

Now,  Baystate Medical Center, which is already recognized for its life-saving angioplasty up to 25 minutes sooner than the national standard, has partnered with General Devices to pilot the GD e-Bridge telemedicine mobile app to further treatment times.

Efficient and reliable communication between hospital emergency departments and emergency medical services (EMS) teams is essential for patients to get the immediate care they need, especially in time-sensitive cases such as a STEMI heart attack.

The sooner EMS can start administering life-saving treatment for STEMI patients, the better the outcome. With the right tools, including the new GD e-Bridge technology, paramedics can notify the Baystate Medical Center Emergency Department and the cardiac catheterization team, so they can prepare the lab, equipment, and personnel for the patient’s arrival.

“With our high STEMI volumes, we wanted to make outcomes even better for our patients and that’s where e-Bridge really shines,” said Nathan Stanaway, clinical business manager for Mobile Care and EMS at Baystate Health. “With the app, we have real-time patient information that empowers us to treat patients faster upon ED arrival.”

The GD e-Bridge mobile app enables communications through text, photos, audio, video, and even live streaming. The telehealth solution provides an easy-to-use, region-wide mechanism to alert, notify, and track all STEMI cases in real time from pre-hospital contact through emergency-deaprtment handoff to the STEMI team at Baystate.

Treatment to stop a STEMI heart attack is provided in a cardiac (heart) catheterization lab, such as that at Baystate Medical Center, where over 350 STEMI patients are treated each year.

National studies have proven that a greater number of lives are saved when heart-attack patients are quickly treated with angioplasty in a state-of-the-art cardiac-catheterization laboratory, such as the one at Baystate Medical Center, which is staffed by trained, licensed, experienced technical personnel with an interventional cardiologist around the clock, seven days a week.

Baystate’s Heart & Vascular Program regularly ranks among the top cardiac programs nationally. It also has a ‘door-to-balloon’ time that ranks in the top 10% in the nation, which significantly increases the chance of surviving a heart attack. Door-to-balloon time means the time it takes for patients arriving in the ED to receive balloon angioplasty to stop a heart attack.