Pulsara Releases Innovative A&E Availability Feature for UK Ambulance Services and Hospital Medical Staff

New functionality allows hospitals to notify ambulance services of A&E availability, improving efficiency, collaboration, and patient care.

Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organisations during dynamic events, recently released a new feature on their platform that allows UK healthcare systems and ambulance services to access A&E Availability information directly from the platform. With this added feature, critical details about a hospital’s capability to accept patients can be easily updated by each organisation and will appear to ambulance services when choosing a destination. This means improved decision making for ambulance services and faster, more efficient care for patients in their most critical moments.

"Pulsara is finding innovative ways to uncover and leverage vital information about the healthcare network in real time and in ways that were previously impossible without modern, cloud-based technology,” said Erich Hannan, Chief Technology Officer of Pulsara. “With A&E Availability we’re taking all we’re doing to the next level, giving our UK customers better data to guide paramedic decisions within their current workflows, mitigate surge during large-scale emergencies, and help connect patients with the closest available care in any emergency."

The Pulsara platform is a secure, easy-to-use app that unites the entire care team — even if they are in different departments or organisations. By replacing multiple phone calls, radio reports, faxes, and pagers with one unified patient channel, Pulsara enables more efficient patient care from start to finish. A&E Availability further expands the power of the platform, helping to match ambulance services demand with hospital supply.

A&E Availability is especially important in the midst of the ongoing pandemic as cases continue to surge or remain high. By knowing which hospitals have space or resources for additional patients, Pulsara can help more efficiently mitigate patient surges and hospital strain.

Not only does A&E Availability help prevent adding patients to an already overwhelmed healthcare system, but it also assists paramedics in preserving ambulance service unit utilization hours. Paramedics can save time for their patients and their own crews by verifying a facility’s ability to accept their patients before spending time driving there. Higher utilisation translates to higher efficiency and turnaround time for ambulance crews.

Once a hospital enables A&E Availability in Pulsara HQ, they can make status updates in a matter of seconds to ensure ambulance services always have the most accurate picture of their availability. For example, if a hospital is in the middle of a mass casualty incident, they can alert ambulance services that their hospital is at capacity. Or, if a critical resource, like the CT scanner, is down at a hospital, ambulance services can be alerted through the Pulsara platform and redirect their trauma patient to a hospital with the right resources.

Pulsara's A&E Availability feature also fits naturally into ambulance services’ existing workflows; paramedics receive these real-time availability insights at the same time as they’re selecting a destination facility — no need to navigate to another screen or platform. The value and ease of this information for paramedics incentivises hospitals to keep their status up to date.

"A&E Availability is a game-changer,” said Tim Hakamaki, Senior Vice President of Product Development. “While ambulance services and hospital teams will benefit and see major efficiencies from the feature, ultimately it's the patients who win."

About Pulsara

During the most critical moments in life, Pulsara unites distributed teams and fragmented technologies as dynamic events evolve on a scalable communications and logistics platform. What makes Pulsara unique is its ability to enable dynamic networked communications for any illness or injury. With Pulsara, clinicians can add a new organisation, team, or specialist to any patient event, dynamically building a care team even as the patient condition and location constantly evolve.

We envision a world where needless suffering is eliminated because communities can unite and communicate without friction. Studies report an average decreased treatment time of approximately 30% when using Pulsara, the evidence-based standard of care. For more information, visit www.pulsara.com.