The lives of stroke and heart attack victims could be saved by a new way of delivering care using existing technology.
Imerja, which provides Video as a Service (VaaS) software, was co-founded by Ian Jackson.
While video conferencing is an ageing technology, packaging it into a robust and efficient system which allows patients to be treated accurately by remote clinicians is changing the face of healthcare.
“We have a ‘telemedicine’ service and have equipped eight A&E departments across Lancashire and Cumbria with high-definition ‘telestroke’ medical carts,” Jackson told BusinessCloud’s ‘tech entrepreneurs who want to change the world’ event at the International Festival for Business.
“That allows a clinician who could be based at home or in hospital – anywhere, in fact – to be able to connect to that video conferencing medical cart and to provide a remote consultation and diagnosis, and prescribe to and treat a patient.”
He added: “The treatment of stroke, for example, is very timely and we were finding that suspected stroke patients were getting to A&E but there were no clinicians there to treat them because it was out-of-hours or they weren’t on shift that day in the hospital.
“So that patient would not receive the diagnosis they need and be prescribed the anti-clotting drug which would give them a good chance of recovery.”
The tech is also being used to treat patients in departments as diverse as renal and speech and language therapy.
There are many other firms changing the face of healthcare with technology.
Skin Analytics is a tool which aims to improve the survival rate for melanoma skin cancer by providing users with a low-cost way to identify moles which could be cancerous.
Florence is a telecom-based tech is looking to reduce hospital admissions and keep people in their homes for longer.
Dublin-based start-up Beats Medical helps to improve the lives of those with Parkinson’s disease.
And Eva Diagnostics is a company whose aim is to revolutionise blood tests so they can be analysed without a hospital laboratory – potentially improving the lives of people undergoing chemotherapy.