Q:  What is MediView Mobile?

MediView™ is a first-of-its-kind prehospital communication platform that lets First Responders relay real-time patient data to a destination hospital even as it is collected, reducing paperwork and eliminating the risk of missing information and medical errors as the patient is transferred by ambulance to an emergency department.  Bridging the "data chasm" between the ambulance and hospital is of the essence to saving precious minutes in an emergency. 

MediView’s unique innovations include speech-to-text, on-screen handwriting recognition, integrated multimedia, integrated GPS mapping for real-time ambulance location updates, and visibility between the ambulance and the hospital.  MediView™ makes automated advance hospitals team activations a reality, and ties such capabilities to real-time, secure, verifiable data that is HIPAA and HITECH compliant.

In addition to filling the gap between the First Responder and the emergency department, MediView™ goes beyond the digitization of pre-hospital care records to provide medics with situational awareness, robust decision support functions and real-time data for hospital and regional resource planning.  An Internet-connected device in the emergency department can log into BLT's MediView™ Hub™ (formerly "COMM-SaaS") application and view in-transit patient data in real-time—to enabling hospital resource planning, staff activations, and even advance patient registrations before the ambulance arrives at the hospital.

Q:  Why is MediView better than current methods of capturing patient data?

Current paper-based methods for ambulance patient data collection and transmission fail in many respects, the most important of which is the sheer volume amount of data that is lost at the crucial moment of handoff of patient custody from ambulance to emergency department.  Studies show that the typical First Responder spends an average of 27 minutes with each patient (both first aid and transport) prior to hospital handoff, but only 45-60 seconds is spent on the patient transfer. 

As a result, typical data loss at handoff is around 46% due to the inadequacy of paper records to collect enough data that decisions can be made from them in case of a medical emergency.  First Responders are known to record patient data in any way they can—medics taking down notes on stray pieces of paper is far from unusual, and one Deputy Fire Chief even requested that MediView™ include an image of a glove on-screen.  Why?  Because "that's what we're used to writing on."  Ambulance records are often incomplete or illegible, risking the loss or inaccuracy of vital patient information.  This in turn leads to a duplication of efforts inside the hospital, and extended times-to-treatment.

MediView™ also simplifies the billing process for ambulance providers: so often medics must negotiate at length with hospitals for enough information about their transported patients to submit for reimbursement.  By some estimates, the cost of post-run paperwork and overtime is 1% per medic per week.  We have encountered cases in which it takes as much as 72 hours for the transporting EMS agency to obtain the hospital-side data it requires to complete billing and QA.  

Generally understood to be most important in an emergency is the “Golden Hour"—that is, the 60 minutes following an injury, auto accident, heart attack or stroke.  Providing First Responders a technology to seamlessly collect and transfer patient data from the scene to the next link in the emergency care chain promises to shave precious minutes—and dollars—off the process, with the immediately potential for better patient outcomes.

Q:  Who are "First Responders"?

Beyond Lucid Technologies recognizes that a "First Responder" may not always be a professional medic.  We prefer to engage the emergency incident documentation process with a broader vista, recognizing that the “first on-scene” may indeed be an ambulance crew; or it may be a firefighter, peace officer, or military medical personnel.  But where people gather for play or work time is equally critical during an emergency, yet the first on-scene may be a civilian safety and security officer.  Consider, for example, transit systems, malls, office buildings, sports arenas, factories, construction sites, power plants, rehab facilities, and clinics (even in-home caregivers).  

Q:  How can a busy First Responder utilize a complex technology while performing emergency medicine?

MediView™ aims to make First Response more efficient by drawing data from a variety of sources to provide situational awareness. (Consider our company name: "BEYOND LUCID" Technologies.  Lucidity = consciousness, awareness, working knowledge.)  These sources include 911 dispatch, integrated GPS, and even (where available) hospital-based electronic medical records and health information exchanges, from which the system can import data regarding a known patient’s medical history, allergies, known conditions, and so on—the better to facilitate critical care safely and effectively.   

MediView™ has been designed in light of extensive research and conversations with potential clients, including medics, fire chiefs, sheriffs, military physicians and other First Responders around the country and across industries.   The system's interface follows a logical progression along the medic's workflow, starting with dispatch, leading to GPS-based routing to and from the patient, facilitating the capture of incident data, and finally enabling two-way communication between medics and other healthcare providers along the emergency value chain via embedded multimedia. MediView™ includes a unique timeline function where collected data is recorded during transit, creating an actionable interface by which covered entities can access patient data securely and in real-time.

Q:  Doesn't this kind of technology already exist?  (Our #1 most commonly asked question...)

We wish it did.  There are companies that have addressed some of the issues faced by First Responders – for example, clinical data collection, and data transfer to billing.  But no other company has combined all the features of MediView™ into a single package that can be used online or offline, in a rural setting or an urban one, in a mine or on an oil rig or in a senior care center...and that facilitates telemedicine while handling multiple patient records simultaneously.  

MediView™ was built – from the ground-up – for use in mass casualty and natural disaster contexts.  There is so little technology being used to track and transport patients intelligently during these types of crises (there are legislated protocols in many places, but those tend to be broadsword rather than targeted approaches) that it's terrifying, and we're trying to help.  

Q:  What does the hospital need to do to access the real-time information?  Does the hospital need to install a new technology platform?

After performing an administrative verification of each party seeking access to MediView™--an essential step to ensure patient privacy and data security—authorized administrators at the hospital will be able to set clinical users up with secure access credentials.  When the hospital receives an incoming notification (e.g., from a MediView™ Mobile client unit being used in an area ambulance), the triage nurse, physician, or emergency department administrator simply logs into the MediView™ Hub™ website to review the patient's incoming information.  

The hospital can input patient disposition information back into the clinical record, "closing the loop" for billing and post-discharge follow-up.  Integration engineering is not required, as the MediView™ Hub™ application is entirely cloud-based and multi-level encrypted.  All that is required is Internet access.

Q:  How does MediView™ interact with hospitals?  Can hospitals use the incoming data?  
(Our #2 most commonly asked question...)

MediView’s is designed specifically for NEMSIS version 3, but it is also compatible with NEMSIS 2 and HL-7, an interoperable XML format. The ambulance run record can be accessed securely over the Internet from within the hospital, with the run report made available for download, print, or insertion into an electronic patient record by the hospital's own IT team.  (BLT’s own engineering team can complete an end-to-end integration for the hospital, but such non-recurring custom engineering will require a separate fee.)  Hospital-affiliated physicians with Web access on a handheld device can access the incoming patient timeline as they walk about the hospital.

Q:  Is customization available?

MediView™ includes certain customization options depending on the user's role within a given organization—for example, administer, supervisor, or medic / user—and additional features will be rolled out over time.   The MediView™ platform will become increasingly robust as we gather user data: the nature of innovation, after all, is such that no company can be completely certain of which features will resonate most strongly with its clients, and which will gain less traction.  The First Response community has, by and large, been chronically underserved, so the opportunity for positive disruption is tremendous.  At the same time, we believe that the onus is on us as a company to pay attention to our clients' feedback and develop features in consultation with them. 

Q:  How is the MediView platform delivered to customers?

MediView™ is a cloud-and-client SaaS packed with innovative features designed to make First Response safer, more efficient, and more cost-effective for medics, hospitals, and patients alike —with zero integration engineering required for "covered entity" stakeholders to access critical patient information.  The program can be purchased as a standalone application or preinstalled on a variety of mobile computers (including ruggedized tablets and slate-style handhelds), for maximum versatility and choice to the user.  We believe that smart design and attention to the user experience should make MediView™ easy to navigate, but supplementary training (including tele-training) is available and online tutorial videos will help shrink the learning curve while helping our clients avoid the expense of lengthy training seminars.