WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — With each stroke of the clock, the odds of Amanda Sparks fully recovering from her stroke go down until she’s treated. That’s why Novant Health hospitals are using new artificial intelligence to help treat stoke patients faster.
“I went to pick up my phone off the floor and realized when I sat back up, I didn't have it in my hand. And so I reached again for my phone and realized I didn't have it in my hand again and knew something was wrong,” Sparks said.
At 3:25, the teacher and her husband went to the Elkin hospital where they diagnosed her and uploaded brain scans to technology called VIZ.ai.
The artificial intelligence program looks for red flags and immediately alerts doctors at the main Novant hospital in Winston-Salem.
“Nowadays we instantaneously get the scans that we need on a telephone, on an iPhone, we can see those scans and we can use our expert eyes to really make the definitive diagnosis,” Dr. Colin McDonald said. “It saves time, it also saves unnecessary transfers, and it just improves patient's outcome.”
Because of this program, by 3:47, the hospital was able to give her a clot busting drug to stop the stroke. A 22-minute process that used to take hours.
“Let's take the old days when we heard a patient was having a problem in one of these little hospitals. What would we do? We would have that hospital literally burn those images on a CD scan. The EMS team would carry that CD to us. We would run it into this room, the CT room. We would download that. It would take a while to be uploaded into our system. And then we would see it,” McDonald said.
But scans showed she still wasn’t better, so an ambulance took her to Winston. While she was on the way, doctors at the hospital used scans from the program to prep the operating room. And when she arrived at 6:57, she went straight into surgery. Which lasted until just 7:36. Less than four hours after first getting to the hospital in Elkin. Doctors say the reason they could respond so fast was because of VIZ.ai.
“This is a tidal wave and not just a big wave. It's a huge change. It is really the greatest breakthrough in the last 10 years. It is. And I mean it,” McDonald said.
The AI does come with some oversight. It was reviewed and approved by the FDA in February, and VIZ.ai is currently in use in over 1,500 hospitals across the country.