The Victorian Stroke Telemedicine Program

The Victorian Stroke Telemedicine initiative is a ground breaking program of work that has the potential to transform the way clinicians collaborate across organisational boundaries to deliver the best care possible to stroke patients irrespective of their location.

Aims

The objective of the program is to improve the care of acute stroke patients across Victoria through the use of cutting edge technology. To achieve this aim, we have implemented a seamless videoconference service across 16 hospitals providing 24 hour access to a stroke neurologist roster. This service is now run as an on-going service through Ambulance Victoria.

In the Victorian Stroke Telemedicine program there are three key research themes: i) clinical ii) implementation science, and iii) health economics. The data collection has been developed to use the infrastructure available through the Australian Stroke Clinical Registry (AuSCR) (Prof. Dominique Cadilhac, co-head of this ongoing project, and The Florey are national data custodians) which has been expanded to include stroke telemedicine variables. In this way, ongoing benefits of the program can be captured to measure sustainability impacts beyond 2018.

Interim results show that eligible patients are being treated more quickly and more safely.