Stroke is a leading cause of disability in Australia and a time-critical emergency requiring specialist care. With over a third of stroke patients in NSW from rural and regional areas, the challenge is providing local physicians access to expert clinicians.
What is the NSW Telestroke Service?
The NSW Telestroke Service brings specialist stroke care to rural and regional NSW. It connects local teams and emergency doctors with expert stroke clinicians through video consultations 24/7.
The service is coordinated by a host team based at Prince of Wales Hospital.
Partnering for rapid stroke care solutions
The implementation of the NSW Telestroke Service was a collaboration between South Eastern Sydney Local Health District, eHealth NSW, the Agency for Clinical Innovation and the Ministry of Health to deliver hyperacute stroke care to rural and regional NSW.
eHealth NSW works with the NSW Telestroke Service to facilitate doctors’ ability to virtually assess patients including rapid access to imaging and real-time live assessment using simple technologies.
How the NSW Telestroke Service delivers critical stroke care across the state
Innovation through integration
We used existing technologies readily accessible to clinicians in emergency and radiology departments.
These include the Enterprise Image Repository and implementation of post perfusion software —to support the Telestroke Service.
Rapid response when every second counts
One of those technologies is the Acute Stroke Assessment Protocol tool.
It quickly helps determine if a patient may need urgent hyperacute reperfusion therapy and an assessment by a NSW Telestroke neurologist.
Instant access to critical insights
These technologies give the NSW Telestroke team instant access to critical diagnostics. This enables fast, collaborative assessment and treatment of suspected stroke patients in rural and regional areas, and guiding timely, definitive management.