A Visual Task Management Application for Acute Ischemic Stroke Care.

Area of Science:

• Neurology
• Emergency Medicine
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Optimizing acute ischemic stroke (AIS) treatment requires efficient parallel workflows via code stroke (CS) protocols.
• Information sharing challenges within existing CS systems prompted the development of a new solution.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel information communication technology (ICT) application, Task Calc. Stroke (TCS), for improving AIS care.
• To assess the impact of TCS on streamlining critical task times and communication efficiency in a CS workflow.

Main Methods:

• A novel smart device application, TCS, was implemented to visualize real-time task progress using color indicators.
• A comparative study assessed door-to-computed tomography, door-to-complete blood count (door-to-CBC), door-to-needle, and door-to-puncture times.
• Three groups were compared: TCS-based CS, phone-based CS, and non-CS. A post-implementation survey evaluated communication burden.

Main Results:

• The TCS-based CS group showed a significant reduction in door-to-CBC time (31 to 19 min, p=0.043) compared to the phone-based CS group.
• While other processing times decreased, the reduction was not statistically significant.
• The TCS-based CS group had a higher rate of IV thrombolysis (78% vs. 46%, p=0.037), and 82% of users reported reduced communication burden.

Conclusions:

• Task Calc. Stroke (TCS) effectively supports information sharing in parallel CS workflows for AIS care.
• The application demonstrably shortens critical task processing times and alleviates communication challenges among healthcare teams.