Wireless technology enables people to keep in touch wherever they are by transmitting text, pictures and voice. Often a cellphone is a lifesaver for someone stranded in a car that has broken down, or found themselves in some other emergency in which the cellphone is their only way to communicate their condition to those who can help.

Now at a medical center in Newark, NJ, wireless technology is being used to save lives of patients suffering a heart attack. A new system allows on-call cardiologists to receive ECGs on “smart phones” and be in touch directly with the paramedic on the scene. Before the patient has even arrived at the hospital, the cardiologist has seen the ECG and can instruct the paramedic on life-saving treatment. The ECG can even be sent to the hospital’s cath lab, and patients can be transported directly there, cutting down the door-to-balloon time, the time between arrival at the hospital and the initial inflation of an angioplasty balloon to open a blocked coronary artery.

“We have found a way to receive electrocardiograms from home, from another hospital, from our cars — anywhere we are,” said Vivek N. Dhruva, D.O., academic chief fellow in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-New Jersey Medical School, who presented the paper. “In only 4 months, we went from being in the bottom 10 percent of hospitals in the time to treatment of heart attack to being in the top 10 percent of hospitals.”

The current guideline for door-to-balloon time is 90 minutes. Using the wireless system, the UMDNJ is now averaging 73 minutes.

Transmitting ECGs to Cardiologists by Smart Phone Cuts Treatment Time in Half