title: Smartphone-assisted prehospital medical information system for analyzing data on prehospital stroke care.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Optimizing prehospital stroke care is important because effective treatments for acute stroke require a narrow therapeutic time window. We developed a smartphone-assisted prehospital medical information system (SPMIS) to facilitate research on prehospital stroke care.
  
  
  METHODS
  Prehospital medical information was input into the SPMIS application installed on smartphones by emergency medical staff, sent to a server through the Internet, and connected with in-hospital information. Using SPMIS, we analyzed data on 914 patients transferred to our institution by ambulance between April 2012 and March 2013.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The data analyzed were the sensitivity and specificity of the prehospital diagnosis and prehospital stroke scale and the relationship between prehospital vital signs and forms of stroke. These analyses could be performed semiautomatically in a few hours.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  SPMIS enabled us to analyze the prehospital information of patients with stroke in a short time with little effort. More large-scale studies on prehospital stroke care will become feasible using SPMIS, which may lead to advances in stroke treatment.
authors.affiliation: From the Departments of Neurosurgery (T.N., H.K., K.I.) and Medical Information (S.K.), National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Osaka, Japan; and Department of Neurosurgery, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan (K.I.).
authors.forename: Takuro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakae
authors.forename: Hiroharu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kataoka
authors.forename: Shigeki
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuwata
authors.forename: Koji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Iihara
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000555:Ambulatory Care Information Systems / Q000592:standards*; D040421:Cell Phone / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D006751:Hospital Information Systems / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009820:Ohio; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D020521:Stroke / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy*
keywords: emergencies; prehospital emergency care; stroke