Pulsara Blog

The following is an excerpt from an article by Kasia Kerridge, originally published on kktv.com on December 12th, 2023. Check out the full article here. 

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - Colorado Springs firefighters are reflecting on how to better communicate with local hospitals after Club Q.

11 News spoke with the Colorado Springs Fire Department one year after Club Q, which has rolled out a tracking technology by Pulsara. Firefighters put wristbands on patients, connecting to an app, which gives real-time information to hospitals so medical staff can prepare. This is especially important for mass casualty events like Club Q.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on FireRescue1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Courtney Levin, for FireRescue1 BrandFocus Staff.

This platform helps ensure consistent and reliable communication when it matters most

Think about the last 10 conversations you had with someone who wasn’t standing right next to you. There’s a pretty good chance you communicated through text, FaceTime, social media messaging or even a good old-fashioned phone call. It’s highly unlikely you sent them a page, much less a fax.

Today’s communication technology has grown in leaps and bounds. We have confidence that our voicemails are heard and our texts are read, but older methods of communication can leave the sender wondering if their message was received.

When so many millions of people use their smartphones to relay simple information – “Remember to stop at the store to buy milk on the way home” – why would first responders continue to trust older technology to communicate vital information?

“You don’t know what you don’t know,” said Brandon Means, senior vice president of sales at Pulsara. A career paramedic and flight nurse, he was formerly a firm believer in using radios to relay critical patient data.

“I thought our radios worked fine – until they didn’t,” he explained. “They may be working fine on my end, but on the other end, it may sound garbled. There’s a reason we use modern technology in our daily lives. Firefighters, paramedics, nurses and physicians push back and say, ‘No, my pager works fine.’ Well, there’s also a reason they don’t use their radio to call their child riding their bike down the street. It’s just not reliable or consistent.”

When first encountering a new patient, you have a lot of information to quickly relay to the rest of the care team. Thankfully, you've got the patient's driver's license, so that's one hurdle already overcome. But now comes the challenge of quickly entering all this information and passing it along to the rest of your team. 

But if you're using Pulsara, not to worry: we'd like to share with you a new feature that can make this process easy. Key identification data from a US driver's license can be automatically scanned into the patient channel using Driver's License Scanning. 

COVID-19 has taught us quite a bit about our current methods for communicating in a crisis. Whether you are currently experiencing a COVID-19 surge, are anticipating your next surge, or are catching up from your last surge, there is no doubt about one thing: the past two years have exposed many of the flaws in our system. There is good news, though. Now that we can pinpoint, identify, and examine some of the flaws, we have a clear path toward some new ways that we can set ourselves up for success in the future. 

Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen firsthand the results of our current systems. We now know that very few are truly prepared for all hazards and stress events. 

Editor's Note: The following post is adapted from a presentation Dr. James Woodson recently gave at the Arab Health Conference in Dubai on June 24th, 2021 entitled "Enabling Networked Communication: How Innovations in Mobile Technology Can Be Leveraged For Better Quality Of Care." Though the content was specifically tailored for conference attendees, the principles Dr. Woodson shares apply to healthcare systems worldwide. (Watch the full presentation here, or check out Part 1 and Part 3 of our blog coverage.)

Poor communication in healthcare is an ongoing issue around the world. Miscommunication costs over $1.7 billion in the U.S. alone each year, causes 80% of serious medical errors during transitions of care, and contributes greatly to preventable deaths. 

When we look for the root cause of the problem, it's actually pretty simple: disconnected human work.

There's a brand new industry on the rise that revolves around the concept of the connected worker. Connected worker platforms started in manufacturing, and are starting to move into other industries. The basic idea behind them is to use a combination of hardware, network, and software tools to enable frontline workers to communicate with supervisors or fellow employees who are in another location. 

I think there is a lot that healthcare can learn from these types of platforms. We should be looking at the concept of the connected provider: a healthcare provider who navigates their environment and communicates with other team members through connective technologies. Mobile technology can enable clinicians to ask questions and share information with the right team member at the right time, empowering them to act on behalf of each individual patient within their broader system. 

It's difficult to have a healthy team dynamic without good communication. 

But in healthcare, a positive team dynamic isn't the only thing depending on good communication. One retrospective analysis found that communication and teamwork issues were among the most frequent contributing factors to incident reports and adverse events. In fact, one report in the analysis showed that 30% of all surgical procedures included a communication failure. On top of that, 36% of those failures caused delays in treatment time, errors in the surgical procedure, or tension among the care team.

For patients, that's a significant impact on the quality of their care experience. Delays and errors can mean complications, a longer stay in the hospital, and an even longer road to healing. 

Editor's Note: The following post is adapted from a presentation Dr. James Woodson recently gave at the Arab Health Conference in Dubai on June 24th, 2021 entitled "Enabling Networked Communication: How Innovations in Mobile Technology Can Be Leveraged For Better Quality Of Care." Though the content was specifically tailored for conference attendees, the principles Dr. Woodson shares apply to healthcare systems worldwide. (Watch the full presentation below or at this link, and check out Part 2 and Part 3 of our blog coverage.)

As a board-certified emergency physician, I practiced medicine for many years in several different areas of the United States. Through my clinical experience, I discovered that my passion was actually to focus on systems of care: How do you combine multiple different organizations, resources, and people together to quickly surround a patient and provide care for them?

For the past decade, I've been studying how to leverage mobile technology to be able to bring people together, and how to actually create a shared consciousness around a single patient event. 

Digital health is a massive, multi-faceted landscape. The current emphasis on chronic care management, health, and wellness is incredibly important—and as healthcare begins to decentralize, that's where the focus should be. However, my focus is on the acute care space and uniting care teams.

The acute care space usually serves patients that are often undifferentiated and have an unscheduled and unstructured need. When an event happens, how do they enter into the acute care system? How do we get the right patient to the right facility with the right resources at the right time?

When our customers experience the benefits of Pulsara—from faster door-to-needle times and minimized errors to improved team communication and reduced costs—it goes without saying that we love to share and celebrate their successes. LewisGale Regional Health System in southwest Virginia is just such a case, recently releasing both a press release and video testimonial about how Pulsara is helping them better support their patients and care teams.

From their press release:

“EMS plays a vital role in improving care for these patients, and we’ve known for some time that patients with life-threatening conditions receive faster treatment when EMS activate the appropriate hospital team from the field,” said Steven Pasternak, MD, emergency department medical director at LewisGale Medical Center. “This new, cloud-based, mobile technology further decreases the amount of time it takes to communicate vital data and activate hospital teams compared to traditional methods of communication between ERs and EMS. For example, if a patient has had a suspected cardiac event, the EKG administered by EMS in the field can be transmitted in real-time to the hospital, which enables the hospital to be ready to perform, if necessary, a cardiac catheterization procedure to open blocked arteries as soon as the patient arrives.”

In time-sensitive emergencies, it’s easy to see how each passing minute impacts a patient’s outcome, for better or worse. The faster a patient receives treatment, the better chances they have at a good outcome. When you’re performing a time-sensitive intervention for a stroke or trauma patient, you know that every minute matters. 

But what happens after the patient is admitted to the hospital? What about the minutes slipping past that aren’t quite as noticeable: the time while a patient recovers, waiting to be discharged? 

How does the length of a patient’s stay in the hospital impact their outcome?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Brittany Norman for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

2020 was a year of pivots.

Movies being released on streaming services and Netflix rather than in theaters. Peloton and home virtual gym sales through the roof. Zoom & Microsoft Teams replacing the office board room. All of these are shining examples of our ability to use technology to adapt during the perilous times of COVID-19. With our need to remain connected while isolated, we saw everything from your cousin’s baby shower to your favorite artist’s concert taking place online.

So what was the answer that Pulsara, a company already based in healthcare communication and connection, had for the sudden need for flexibility that the global pandemic demanded?

Enter: Pulsara PATIENT. 

Have you ever noticed how challenging it can be to describe what you see to a person not presently with you? You could be witnessing some spectacular spectacle or some terrifying sight, but try as you might to communicate your experience, your words seem weak.

However, send a photo of what you see, and suddenly there's mutual understanding. The image instantly conveys context and meaning. You've heard the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" repeated time and again. Cliché notwithstanding, this phrase continues to ring true in human communications.

It’s an oft-quoted fact that for patients suffering from a stroke, 1.9 million neurons are lost every minute their condition goes untreated. Every minute makes a difference—not just between life and death, but in the patient's quality of life once they survive. Will they be able to walk downstairs? Feed themselves? Communicate with their loved ones?

There are many factors that determine how quickly it's possible for a patient to receive treatment. However, there is one consistent obstacle in the way of getting patients timely treatment: the time it takes providers to communicate vital information to everyone on the team. 

Looking for an excuse to go to Dubai?

Or perhaps you've been wanting to learn more about Middle East healthcare and would love the opportunity to network with global healthcare leaders and influencers (like Pulsara!) — facilitating the continuous advancement of healthcare in the region and the world?

Then look no further than the 2021 Arab Health Conference this June 21-24! In addition to opportunities like exclusive international networking and exposure to the newest state-of-the-art medical technologies and processes, you'll also not want to miss Dr. James Woodson, MD, FACEP, Founder and CEO of Pulsara, as he presents the session 'Enabling Networked Communication: How Innovations in Mobile Technology Can Be Leveraged for Better Quality of Care.' 

Read on to learn more!

In the early 2000s, if you had told someone you could Facetime someone across the world, they would have asked what "Facetime" is. Fast forward to early 2015’s declaration by TechCrunch contributor Tom Goodwin: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.”

Software is allowing for the decentralization of goods and services and has created an environment that can connect the masses. "Decentralization" refers to the transfer of control and decision-making from one centralized entity to a distributed network. It means your network has become more connected, enabling faster response times. 

The same decentralization is happening with healthcare.

Breakdowns and bottlenecks in healthcare communication systems frequently cause a myriad of delays in patient care. Legacy systems like radios, pagers, fax machines, and multiple phone calls connect clinicians but aren't always able to efficiently get the right message to the right person at the right time. Combined with the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, it's clear that our current systems of communication need to be reimagined. Healthcare officials must begin to think differently. 

Your acute care, collaboration, and coordination solution needs to be scalable and flexible, enabling you to adapt quickly to the dynamic needs of patients and clinicians—and span across all organizations involved in patient care. By replacing legacy systems with one solution that covers the entire care continuum, health providers can achieve reduced treatment times, conserve resources, and improve the lives of both patients and caregivers.

When: The evening of April 27 in the USA; 11 AM on the 28th in New South Wales, Australia

Cost: FREE

Registration: Click here to register

Read on for further details!

Two years ago my family experienced an unexpected medical event. Our mom had a heart attack at only 62. 

I missed a call at work and checked my voicemail. My mom’s best friend called to say that my mom was having a heart attack and that she had brought her to the hospital. 

My mom had initially visited a local Urgent Care because she thought she had something stuck in her throat. After examination, the clinician ordered an ECG and immediately said that something looked wrong and that she needed to get the emergency room right away.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Sarah Calams of EMS1 BrandFocus.

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In the past, the traditional way of thinking as a paramedic was often this: Get the patient in the rig and drive to the hospital as soon as possible to get the patient the care they need.

But what if the patient wasn’t being transported to the right facility?

Imagine: a paramedic recognizes on scene that they are treating a stroke victim. Their first thought is to get the patient to a hospital as quickly as possible. But what if the receiving hospital isn’t equipped or staffed appropriately to treat the patient?

Pagers have been a staple in healthcare communication since the 1980s. Small, loud, and easily passed from clinician to clinician, pagers have been the constant companions of doctors and nurses for a long time. And in that time, they've been vital tools for communication. 

They have their drawbacks, but there are a few important reasons why pagers have stuck around for so long. One particular feature in the pager's design has ensured their longstanding usefulness for physicians: The loud, obnoxious alerts.

Why is that important? Pagers interrupt workflow. In a good way.

Ever since I started working for Pulsara, self-reflection about communication has become an almost daily ritual. Reflecting on my career, it’s very apparent that when things haven’t gone right with projects, patient care, presentations, etc., a miscommunication of some sort has been the likely culprit.   

Most advice on becoming an effective leader is geared—maybe not surprisingly—toward the things we can change about ourselves. We focus our attention on asking ourselves, “Do I have the right values, the right traits, the right competencies, or even the right style to be a good leader?” 

While those questions are important, we sometimes forget that the environment you create for your team makes just as much, if not more, of an impact. From asking questions to listening to their team members, an effective leader is attuned to their environment and fosters an atmosphere where their coworkers are safe to grow and learn.