Paramedics and neurologists team up to offer urgent stroke care – in the field
New Australian Government funding will fast track urgent stroke diagnosis at the scene of the stroke in response to a pilot study that was so successful, it is being rolled out early.
The Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, has announced funding of $15 million over 12 months so the Australian Stroke Alliance can extend completed clinical trials with stroke-smart paramedics in standard road ambulances.
“The Australian Government wants to ensure people get the health care they need when they need it – and time is of the essence if you’ve had a stroke. Getting the right care quickly can make all the difference between a good recovery and ongoing disability. This is why we’re providing $15 million to the Australian Stroke Alliance for advanced training and equipment so paramedics and neurologists can work together with hospitals to provide rapid stroke care.
The funding will allow the expansion of successful pilot studies with communities in Central Victoria, the Hunter region of NSW, across South Australia and the Northern Territory. They will pave the way for a national rollout into rural and remote areas in 2026.
Tele-neurologists, based in hospitals around the country, are on-call to help make time-critical decisions with their paramedic colleagues who will share patient data from the scene. Behind the groundbreaking impact is a tele-health platform, Zeus, developed by the Stroke Alliance with Melbourne-based Titan Prehospital Innovation.
The Zeus app supports paramedic assessment and allows video consultation from within the ambulance at the scene, with a tele-neurologist who will determine the most appropriate hospital to receive the patient. Those at the hospital’s emergency department can monitor the patient’s changing clinical data and prepare for their arrival. Imaging equipment and theatre teams are primed, ready to fast track diagnosis and treatment to efficiently remove clots in the brain or offer other life-saving treatment.
This funding will provide rural Australians with a level of care that, until now, has been unavailable. We are determined to transform prehospital stroke retrieval so there is greater access to urgent care for people who would typically be caught up in an inefficient process due to communication obstacles, interhospital transfers and lack of neurological expertise in rural and remote locations.
Stroke is a time-critical emergency. It is essential to know if a patient has had a bleed in their brain (20 per cent) or a clot (80 per cent). The aim for every emergency crew is to treat the stroke within the Golden Hour before too many neurons die.
The Stroke Alliance team is determined to improve the speed of care for regional Australians who are 17 per cent more likely to experience a stroke than their metropolitan counterparts, and who have less access to urgent care.
A major hurdle to fast care has been the time lost by inter-hospital transfers – with ambulance crews usually driving or flying to the closest hospital. The tele-health liaison allows the neurologist to make a crucial decision – to sometimes bypass smaller hospitals and to head for a major stroke treatment centre.
The achievements are the result of funding by the Medical Research Future Fund in 2021 as part of the Australian Stroke Alliance’s Stroke Golden Hour program.
The new funding comes in response to the success of the Stroke Alliance’s pilot studies where records in time-to-treatment have been broken.
In a recent case, patient Garry Tierney experienced a major stroke while driving near Nowra in NSW. Fortunately, a couple of paramedics had trained with the Stroke Alliance and knew to use the tele-health tool and to connect with a tele-neurologist. Together, they decided to race Garry to a major stroke centre at Liverpool Hospital 160km away, bypassing two smaller facilities.
On arrival and thanks to tele-health advanced warning, Garry was rushed through ED to the CT scanner, fast tracking a diagnosis and allowing him to be treated within 90 minutes of the stroke occurring. This broke records at Liverpool and Garry has returned to normal life, free of disability.
The funding will prepare for the arrival of Australian designed and built portable brain scanners being developed by the Stroke Alliance’s commercial partners, Micro-X and EMVision, for use in regular air and road ambulances. The EMVision trials are set to begin in the coming months. The new funds will also:
- fund advanced clinical training of paramedics and tele-neurologists, nurses and other health workers
- allow constant optimisation of the services offered and robust assessment of their performance.
We’ve seen the impact of this new paradigm on vulnerable, remote communities so we know it needs to be rolled out across the country. To start, patients in the catchments of the Hunter region in NSW, Central Victoria, across Northern Territory and in South Australia will be offered this advanced care. It is so encouraging that every state and territory has provided in-principle support for their ambulance services to adopt these innovative new models of care. We are leading the world in advanced MedTech to support our paramedics and neurologists. Our program is expected to yield substantial benefits, including $154.2 billion in cumulative savings by 2035, improved patient outcomes, and a significant reduction in the burden of disease.
For more information, please contact Amanda Place,
Director of Government Relations and Communications,
at the Australian Stroke Alliance: 0411 204 526
Amanda.place@austrokealliance.org.au