In the emergency room, more than perhaps anywhere else, time is a precious commodity. A new app from a brother-sister team aims to help medical professionals speed up at least one decision-making process. For acute stroke victims, the administration of tPA – a “clot busting” drug – can make the difference between a healthy life, disability and even death.
[ibimage==22215==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-right]Inverness resident Balu Kadiyala, an IT professional, and his sister, Dallas-based Dr. Madhuri Koganti, teamed up to create BrainAttack. The smartphone app puts the criteria for determining whether a patient is eligible to receive tPA right in the doctor’s pocket – and, as such, at his or her fingertips.
Compared to the traditional system, in which doctors must access paper forms to record the patient’s tPA eligibility, BrainAttack allows them to run through a quick checklist that is always available. Rather than rooting through drawers or ordering forms, “the ER physician or nurse can use the BrainAttack app at the patient bedside and determine tPA eligibility in less than 5 minutes, versus 45 minutes the old way,” says Kadiyala.
Patients and health professionals may wonder about the wisdom of relying on an app to inform such an important decision. Kadiyala says the app’s criteria are based on tPA treatment parameters defined by the American Academy of Neurology. He explains that BrainAttack is intended to be used as a guide for doctors, and that each patient’s individual risk factors must be considered before making any decisions regarding treatment.
The proliferation of iPhones in hospital settings is no secret, and Kadiyala hopes that doctors in the emergency room will start using BrainAttack as a tool when treating stroke patients. He and his sister also integrated the ability for the user to email or print the assessment results for the sake of keeping a patient’s records complete.
BrainAttack is the first app developed by Kadiyala and Koganti, but he says it won’t be the last. “We believe technology can play more [of a] role in saving people's lives. [Electronic Medical Records] software is a great first step,” Kadiyala says. “We believe the mobile platform can play a greater role and, in a sense, a different role in this and we plan to exploit it for medical use.”
Visit BrainAttack’s iTunes preview page, and follow them on Twitter at @BrainAttackApp.
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