IU Health will soon roll out an app to help diagnose stroke symptoms, with a central goal to help Spanish-speaking patients.
The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, recommends a test to measure the severity of stroke symptoms called the NIH Stroke Scale. The evaluation can be administered as often as hourly for patients showing signs of a stroke.
Doctors at IU Health are developing an app to help standardize the test in both English and Spanish.
Dr. Ann Jones said she wanted to make the app because she saw the difficulties in English-speaking doctors administering this test to Spanish-speaking patients. The app was developed with the help of Shaney Peña, who teaches clinical neurology at Indiana University.
With the app, doctors don't need to be bilingual or spend valuable time working with an interpreter. And time is a huge factor in optimizing health outcomes for stroke victims.
"Two million neurons die during a stroke for every minute that passes," Dr. Jones said. "So, the faster that we can figure out what's going on, and the faster we can get treatment, the better the outcome."
Dr. Jones said while the app aims to help Spanish-speaking patients, everyone can benefit. She said it will help ensure high-quality medical care across the state.
"You know, I do the NIH Stroke Scale 10 times a day," Dr. Jones said. "But there are some places, say in rural Indiana, where an ER physician may do it four times a year."
They plan to let IU Health doctors use the app with English-speaking patients in roughly one month, test the app at a few locations, then use it with Spanish-speaking patients.
If the tests go well, the full app is set to roll out across the entire IU Health network in roughly six months.
If you suspect someone around you is experiencing a stroke, learn to look for the signs. The American Stroke Association uses the initialism B.E. F.A.S.T.
They say to look out for B: balance loss, E: eye or vision changes, F: face drooping or twisting, A: arm weakness, S: speech difficulty, and T: time to call 911.
Contact WFYI Digital Producer and Reporter Jeremy Reuben at jreuben@wfyi.org
