The AI Revolution is Coming in Emergency Care

U.S. News & World Report Diku Mandavia, MD, FACEP, FRCPC, Chief Medical Officer at FUJIFILM Sonosite Despite expansion in health insurance coverage, emergency rooms are seeing a larger and ageing population, sicker patients who arrive in immediate danger with more chronic conditions, physician shortages as care is expanded, a need for more expensive technical tools, and an unsustainable trend in costs and expenditures. Partial rescue from these challenges may be coming from the most unlikely of sources: artificial intelligence. These aren't robots, but smart apps and tools that can reduce cognitive emergency room burdens, while increasing diagnostic speed, precision and accuracy. Read Dr. Mandavia’s U.S. News & World Report article that discusses the arrival of artificial intelligence and how it is poised to have a transformative impact on emergency department teams and the broader world of medical diagnostics. …

Centre for Medicare & Medicaid Implement New Rules for Shoulder Pain Diagnosis

Beginning on January 1, 2020, the Centre for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched a new appropriate use criteria (AUC) programme for advanced diagnostic imageing services provided to Medicare beneficiaries. The purpose of the new programme, enacted as part of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) signed into law in 2014, is to address the overutilisation of MRI, CT, nuclear medicine, and PET scans. …

Australian Hospital Uses X-Porte to Identify Bone Fractures

Girl being scanned for a fracture by a ultrasound machine

Ultrasound guided Regional Anaesthesia - a major component of ERAS: Dr. Ritesh Roy

Ultrasound guided regional anaesthesia (USGRA) in 21st century has set  a new standard of perioperative care for a wide range of surgical sub-specialty procedures, including orthopaedic, general, thoracic, colourectal, breast, gynaecologic and cosmetic surgery. …

Sonographer Brings POCUS Education to Guyana

RAD-AID International works to optimize access to medical imaging, radiology services, and nursing care and education in over 30 countries around the world. In a recent medical mission to Guyana, diagnostic registered sonographer Radha Persaud, RDMS, RDCS, RT joined a team that included a certified radiology nurse, two nurse practitioners, a radiologist, a radiology administrator, and a fourth-year medical student. …

POCUS for Emergency Medicine Helps Save Lives

How POCUS for Emergency Medicine Helps Save Lives
Emergency physicians must make life-saving decisions as quickly as possible to choose the correct treatment and direct patients to an appropriate hospital. Emergency department chief Dr. Sylvain Benenati and emergency doctor Dr. David Sapir, both from Melun Hospital in France, discuss how the dynamic nature of point-of-care ultrasound makes it invaluable in these busy environments. POCUS on the Road …

Evaluating the Benefits of Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Geriatric Medicine

Dr. Nicolas Azulay is a general medicine doctor specializing in scheduled and emergency ultrasound examinations at the University Hospitals of Nice, France, where he works at the Pasteur II and Cimiez hospitals. As part of the clinical research program GERICARE, he recently studied the impact of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) assessment of patients admitted to the short-stay geriatric unit at Cimiez hospital. …

Emergency Physician Promotes POCUS Education in Laotian Capital

Learning to Master Ultrasound-Guided Pain Control in Zambia

Consultant and trainee anesthetists from Surrey, England traveled to Lusaka, Zambia with a point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) system to train Zambian colleagues in ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia. Dr. Madankumar Narayanan describes the educational objectives of the visit and the enthusiastic response from doctors in Zambia, as the team demonstrated the benefits of ultrasound-guided interventions in classroom workshops and on patients. Responding to a Need in Zambia …

Ultrasound Advances Research and Education in Uganda

French Medical Mission Brings Hope to Moroccan Villagers

Every year, the isolated villages of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco wait with hopeful anticipation for the Solidarité Maroc medical caravan. Located near the town of Imilchil at elevations exceeding 2,300 meters, these villages do not have a permanent access to medical care, so the villagers must travel long distances to reach the nearest hospital. …

Sonosite Ultrasound Technology in an African Village

Emergency physician Dr. Steven Boutrus was kind enough to write this article for FUJIFILM Sonosite about his use of ultrasound during a medical mission for Grace Dental and Medical Missions. …

Doctors Use Paediatric Ultrasound in Bolivia

Pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist Dr. Pablo Motta MD
Paediatric cardiac anaesthesiologist Dr. Pablo Motta MD, FAAP recently returned from Bolivia on a medical mission for HeartGift, developed through a partnership between by Texas Children’s Hospital and Memorial Herman Children’s Hospital, both located in Houston, Texas, and la Fundación Incor. in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The goal of this mission is provide free, world-class paediatric cardiac care to children from underserved areas of Santa Cruz, Bolivia and its surroundings. …

POCUS’ Contribution to Value-Based Medicine

Axis Imageing News Diku Mandavia, MD, FACEP, FRCPC, Chief Medical Officer at FUJIFILM Sonosite With healthcare costs continuing to increase and more insurance companies talking to their hospital providers about signing new value-based payment contracts, a new emphasis on total cost of ownership in the evaluation of medical equipment for purchase is occurring. In this article published in AXIS Imageing News by Dr. Diku Mandavia, Chief Medical Officer, FUJIFILM Sonosite, hospitals can learn how to monetize the ongoing training and education, downtime contingency options, and replacement costs when evaluating the total cost of purchasing a piece of ultrasound equipment. Dr. Mandavia also shares how medical imageing equipment companies and hospitals can work together to develop implementation strategies for medical devices, in this case ultrasound systems, to bring down the costs of care while supporting better patient outcomes. Please read this article entitled, “POCUS’ Contribution to Value-Based Medicine,” to learn more. …

A Solid Future for ICU Ultrasound

Future of ICU ultrasound
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has become an established tool for the rapid assessment and diagnosis of patients across a variety of medical disciplines, not least in the high-pressure environment of intensive care medicine. …

One for All - Standardising Medical Equipment

The North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust serves approximately 700,000 residents of Cambridgeshire, South Lincolnshire, and the neighbouring counties. This recently created trust, formed in April 2017, includes three hospitals—Hinchingbrooke, Peterborough City and Stamford, and Rutland—plus community clinics in Ely and Doddington. …

TEE Simulators Shown to be Effective POCUS Education Tools

Instructor showing the TEE procedure to students

Ultrasound Guidelines for Paediatric Vascular Access

Sonosite blog: POCUS Guidelines for Pediatric Access
More than five million central venous catheter (CVC) lines are placed in hospitals each year, making it one of the most common invasive emergency room procedures. …

In Case of Emergency, Use POCUS

Evangelisches Krankenhaus Unna
Time is of the essence in the emergency department, where a prompt diagnosis can litreally mean the difference between life and death.In this environment, access to point-of-care ultrasound is essential, providing vital information to help clinicians rapidly determine the most appropriate course of action for emergency patients. Dr. Martin Langer, clinical lead for emergency medicine at the Evangelisches Krankenhaus Unna, describes the importance of ultrasound in his department. …

Innovative Scottish Programme Puts POCUS in Rural Ambulances

Sonosite blog: Scottish Program Puts POCUS in Rural Ambulances
FUJIFILM Sonosite’s M-Turbo point-of-care (POC) ultrasound systems will soon be providing pre-hospital diagnostics across the Scottish Highlands as part of the innovative SatCare trial. This study aims to combine POC ultrasound and advanced communications to enable remote image interpretation and decision making for a range of time-critical conditions. …