Tele ICU and Tele-Critical Care Trends

 

Providing the highest quality of patient care remains a primary goal for most doctors and medical professionals. That’s why technologies that allow virtual options are used more and more throughout the healthcare industry. A 2021 research study by Pew Research Center revealed 93% of Americans use the Internet in their homes, which shows the usefulness that virtual medical care for less serious patient needs can provide.

These technological advancements are available in more serious cases as well. Doctors and specialists no longer need to travel to the hospital to provide critical care with Tele-ICU.

What is Tele-ICU?

The American Journal of Medicine defines Tele-ICU, or Telemedicine Intensive Care Unit, as the remote delivery of clinical (critical) care services through audiovisual conferencing technology.” Through this system, doctors can monitor their patients from a distance, allowing them to track vital signs, review medical records, and communicate with the patient’s family. This helps doctors provide more personalized care to their patients and helps them make informed decisions about the patient’s care.

Tele-ICU also helps reduce the number of visits to the hospital, as the patient can be monitored remotely, reducing the risk of infection. Through telemedicine, doctors can be alerted faster of changes in the patient’s condition, allowing them to act quickly and appropriately. Tele-ICU provides better communication between doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers, reducing miscommunications and allowing them to coordinate care more effectively.

5 Ways Telemedicine Benefits Doctors and Patients

So, why do we need tele-icu? Tele-ICU is an invaluable tool for providing better care for intensive care patients. Telemedicine as a whole is an altogether better experience for both the doctor and patients. It’s integrated into the overall care that medical providers give and in most cases is billed the same as a regular in-office visit. Here are five reasons why telemedicine is a beneficial resource:

physician
A physician working remotely
  •     Telemedicine allows for more efficient communication between doctors and patients, eliminating the need for lengthy office visits.
  •     Telemedicine enables doctors to quickly and easily access medical records from any location, providing more accurate and up-to-date information to make treatment decisions.
  •     Telemedicine enables patients to connect with specialists all over the world, allowing them to access more specialized care.
  •     Telemedicine reduces healthcare costs by eliminating the need for travel, overnight stays, and the use of expensive medical equipment.
  •     Telemedicine helps to reduce the spread of infectious diseases by increasing the use of remote consultations and reducing the need for face-to-face contact.

Advanced Practice Providers

The National Library of Medicine published a study on utilizing advanced practice providers or APPs, to help aid in the current physician shortage by using advanced practice providers for tele-critical and Telehealth services. Yet, even as this solution could benefit several cities without many options for a critical care provider otherwise, as well as save lives, the acceptance of such a program is not as widespread as it could be.

The pandemic pushed remote critical care to the forefront in 2020. Looking toward the future, tele-icu is expected to grow once more medical staff and hospitals decide it is a helpful way to treat their patients.

 

Teleradiology Companies

Vesta services partners healthcare facilities and hospitals via remote radiology interpretations. Teleradiology helps unburden facilities from the shortage of radiologists as well as assist rural hospitals who may find it difficult to find staff. Learn more about our services and how we seamlessly integrate into your workflow. Contact us today.

 

6 Tips to Make the Most of Your RSNA Trip!

The top radiological minds meet every year at RSNA. Will you be one of them next month? If you plan to join Vesta Teleradiology and other key radiology thought leaders pioneering the field, take note of these attendee tips below to make the most of your trip!

  1. Secure your bed!

Chicago is a big city, but hotel rooms nearest McCormick Place (the show’s site) sell out fast. And who wants to walk far in the cold weather? If you haven’t booked your room, don’t waste another minute! Click here to see the recommended hotels by RSNA and get your RSNA rate before Monday, November 25.

  1. Bust out your calendar

What’s your purpose for attending? There will be exhibitors, plenaries and other sessions, tons of opportunity to network, or you may even be exhibiting yourself. Regardless, look at your big blocked commitments and immediately start to schedule in the blanks. Even checking the show floor’s hours (Hint: no hours on Sunday, Dec. 1 or after 2 pm ET on Thursday, Dec. 5) is a good idea to make sure your floor time can actually be floor time.

  1. We all have a Type A side

Is part of that newly created plan to have a few important meetings with clients, potential clients, or maybe even industry allies? Where will you go? In the past, there have been few spots in McCormick Place to “grab a chair,” so we recommend booking a conference room at a nearby hotel, reserving a restaurant dining space, or even scout out the nearest coffee shops.

If you have a clearly defined location, you can make the most of your meeting agenda time! We also encourage sending an invitation via Google or Outlook with the location articulated and be sure to add buffer travel time to get to and from!

  1. Not sure what to do with free time?

Have an hour or two in between business development meetings and sessions? Our favorite way to spend free time is walking the show floor to gather competitive intel and notice incoming industry trends. Feel free to schedule a meeting with us to learn about teleradiology, if it’s new to you, or if it’s not, to learn about some of what we’ve picked up on during the show, too! 

  1. Cross your Ts

Who from your group is attending? What are their individual objectives, and can you divide and conquer to make the most of your holistic organization’s attendance? Attending this show can be extremely fruitful if you plan accordingly (and you want to make the most of the registration fee!) so even making time at the end of each day, or the end of the show, to document your findings and make more informed plans for next year, can help you benefit from the RSNA annual meeting experience.

  1. And, as always…

Get those feet ready. If you’ve attended any type of tradeshow or conference you know this, but RSNA is huge, and you will do a lot of walking. Wear comfortable shoes, take any chance you get to grab a seat and be sure to rest your feet in the evenings. Don’t forget to turn on your fitness tracker to at least get credit for all those steps!

 

Want to connect at RSNA? Contact us today to coordinate.

A device recently approved by the U.S. FDA made extremely precise images of a postmortem sample

A 100-hour MRI scan captured the most detailed look yet at a whole human brain

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mri-scan-most-detailed-look-yet-whole-human-brain

A device recently approved by the U.S. FDA made extremely precise images of a postmortem sample .
BY

Over 100 hours of scanning has yielded a 3-D picture of the whole human brain that’s more detailed than ever before. The new view, enabled by a powerful MRI, has the resolution potentially to spot objects that are smaller than 0.1 millimeters wide.

“We haven’t seen an entire brain like this,” says electrical engineer Priti Balchandani of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who was not involved in the study. “It’s definitely unprecedented.”

The scan shows brain structures such as the amygdala in vivid detail, a picture that might lead to a deeper understanding of how subtle changes in anatomy could relate to disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

To get this new look, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and elsewhere studied a brain from a 58-year-old woman who died of viral pneumonia. Her donated brain, presumed to be healthy, was preserved and stored for nearly three years.

Before the scan began, researchers built a custom spheroid case of urethane that held the brain still and allowed interfering air bubbles to escape. Sturdily encased, the brain then went into a powerful MRI machine called a 7 Tesla, or 7T, and stayed there for almost five days of scanning.

The strength of the 7T, the length of the scanning time and the fact that the brain was perfectly still led to the high-resolution images, which are described May 31 at bioRxiv.org. Associated videos of the brain, as well as the underlying dataset, are publicly available.

Researchers can’t get the same kind of resolution on brains of living people. For starters, people couldn’t tolerate a 100-hour scan. And even tiny movements, such as those that come from breathing and blood flow, would blur the images.

But pushing the technology further in postmortem samples “gives us an idea of what’s possible,” Balchandani says. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first 7T scanner for clinical imaging in 2017, and large medical centers are increasingly using them to diagnose and study illnesses.

These detailed brain images could hold clues for researchers trying to pinpoint hard-to-see brain abnormalities involved in disorders such as comas and psychiatric conditions such as depression. The images “have the potential to advance understanding of human brain anatomy in health and disease,” the authors write.