mHealth App Improves Heart Attack Treatment, Care Coordination

Physicians at the Mount Sinai Health System have developed an mHealth application to improve care coordination and speed up care delivery for heart attack patients.

The app seeks to improve health outcomes for patients who experience a ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), a severe type of heart attack that occurs when a major artery is blocked. It is critical that patients receive treatment as fast as possible, as heart attacks can be fatal or bring complications with recovery. 

Treatment consists of an emergency stenting procedure that must be done in a cardiac catheterization lab, which presents a problem for New Yorkers that the app can help solve. 

Mount Sinai Queens Emergency Department doesn’t have a cath lab, and Mount Sinai Hospital’s Catheterization Lab is a six-mile drive away, made all the more troublesome by city traffic. The Queens emergency department transfers around 150 patients to the hospital’s cath lab in Manhattan each year.

By using the mHealth app, emergency department physicians can alert cardiologists at Mount Sinai Hospital of an incoming patient so they are prepared to deliver treatment as soon as the patient arrives.

“With enhanced communication, we can more reliably activate the cath lab and prepare for the patient’s arrival at the very start of treatment in the emergency room,” Annapoorna Kini, MD, director of the cardiac catheterization lab at Mount Sinai Hospital and designer of the mHealth app, said in a press release.

“By getting to the cath lab faster, patients will have fewer complications from the heart attack and may be discharged earlier from the hospital,” she added. “Our app, modeled on the American Heart Association’s recommendation of rapid cath lab-first treatment, can serve as a model for change throughout the United States.”

The app leverages care coordination to ensure patients receive proper and rapid treatment. When a patient arrives at the emergency department exhibiting heart attack symptoms, ED staff can use the app to alert a cardiologist at the hospital’s cath lab. The ED physician can also upload EKG results and other patient information that the cardiologist can view on the mHealth platform.

If the cardiologist establishes that the patient needs the stenting procedure, the cardiac catheterization team will receive a notification through the mHealth app. The app allows the cardiac team to communicate with the ED team through chat or a video call, reducing the amount of time-consuming back-and-forth telephone calls between the two health systems.

The app also allows the cardiac physicians to track the patient’s progress during the transfer and properly prepare for the procedure. Although there is little to be done about reducing traffic and ride time, the app allows cardiologists to get a head start on preparation and eliminates any care delays once the patient arrives. 

In one instance, officials noted, the app saved physicians 30 minutes. 

“The single platform that communicates with all necessary departments allows the Emergency Department to reduce the number of calls and communication devices that the doctors and nurses typically need to use for these cardiac patients,” Matthew Bai, MD, assistant director of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai Queens, said in the press release. 

“These cases typically would require multiple phone calls to coordinate between the emergency room, cardiology, EMS, and the transfer services,” he said. “The app has the potential to increase efficiency and reduce the time it takes to get to the cath lab for improved patient care.”

In addition to increased communication between physicians, the mHealth application also reminds physicians to provide discharged patients with diet, medication, and follow-up care information, aiming to reduce the number of patients who need to return to the hospital, the press release concluded.