After implementing CT perfusion software across its health system, Baltimore-based LifeBridge Health clinicians have been able to identify acute stroke within minutes and with nearly 100 percent accuracy, according to Daniel Durand, MD, chief innovation officer.
Over the past three years, LifeBridge's stroke intervention service has grown by more than 400 percent, said Dr. Durand, who also serves as the health system's vice president of research and chair of radiology.
In November 2018, LifeBridge finalized its deployment of IschemaView's rapid CT Perfusion imaging software, which Dr. Durand announced in a LinkedIn post. He told Becker's Hospital Review that the implementation has not only been a top contributor to the growth of the health system's stroke services but has also served as the tech initiative which has generated the largest return on investment for LifeBridge.
"The quantitative output of this software has allowed us to adopt several evidence-based clinical care pathways," he said. Those pathways include administering tissue plasminogen activator, a medicine given for ischemic stroke, outside of traditional time windows and performing thrombectomy, which entails removing a blood clot from a blood vessel.
The software allows clinicians to analyze and identify which parts of a patient's brain can be protected or restored in the aftermath of a stroke. While the software supports the expansion of LifeBridge's stroke intervention services, the technology poses a high ROI for patient care.
"The real ROI may not be financial, but rather the exceptional differences in outcomes enjoyed by the hundreds of post-stroke patients now leading rewarding lives who, without the benefit of this technology, may not have survived or may have lived with severe disability," Dr. Durand said.
In 2019, LifeBridge's flagship stroke center Sinai Hospital of Baltimore received the Maryland Stroke Center Consortium's Golden Brain Award for posting the fastest "door-to-needle time" in the state. The award recognizes healthcare organizations that administer the alteplase drug, which is given to patients immediately after presenting with stroke symptoms to improve patient survival.
The award is a direct result of LifeBridge's stroke software initiative, Dr. Durand said.