Enabling Technologies Facilitate New Healthcare Delivery Models for Acute Stroke

Delivering quality health care for patients with acute stroke in a timely and affordable fashion is a major challenge in the early 21st century. This is especially true given the shortage of qualified physicians willing and able to treat stroke. This is occurring against a backdrop whereby in the United States, the need for healthcare reform has been identified as urgent and one of the most important national agenda items that needs to be addressed. Developing alternative networks for the delivery of health care has been a stated goal in the debate on healthcare reform. There is the acknowledged need to innovate toward new healthcare models that reduce cost and yet improve quality and accessibility.1 The purpose of this letter is to outline the revolution of new technologies that are becoming available that can fundamentally change and improve how we deliver healthcare for acute stroke. More specifically, today’s communication and network technologies can be used to enable healthcare experts to deliver care remotely. Remotely enabled care allows patients the ability to access the right expertise from wherever they are, thereby improving the quality of care they can receive. Conversely, it also allows healthcare professionals the ability to provide their expertise to patients anywhere they are and at anytime and to do so more efficiently than traveling to the patient’s location. Consequently, remote care has the opportunity to significantly improve the quality care and to do so at a lower cost. Although this remotely enabled care concept applies to healthcare delivery in general, stroke is an ideal application that can lead the way to a new and improved paradigm of healthcare delivery. Stroke is ideal because it is a large societal problem both with regard to cost and quality of life for patients with stroke. Strokes are also unscheduled and …