Internal medicine physicians and residents are starting to make their hospital rounds with Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) to help make diagnoses. POCUS has been around for about two decades in emergency rooms, however, in the past five to ten years, it has been increasingly used in other areas of medicine.
“This has been driven partially by technology making the devices smaller and more portable”, said Christopher Smith M.D Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Co-Director of the POCUS program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center https://www.unmc.edu.
“In internal medicine, it is still a relatively new application but is growing,” said Dr. Smith. “The program at the Medical Center is one of the early programs providing internal medicine residents robust training in POCUS.”
POCUS can be used to help make a diagnosis, do screening, monitor response to therapy, and guide procedures. The machines range in size from handheld to more sophisticated versions on a cart. The point-of-care ultrasound system can see fluid around the heart, the size of the heart chambers, heart valves, and whether the heart is beating normally.
Doctors can obtain information quickly at the patient’s bedside with the small machine. Even if the doctor still needs to do a formal diagnostic study with more detailed information, the device enables the doctor to have some basic information at the bedside which can expedite the proper treatment for the patient.
In other news, ResMed’s https://www.resmed.com AirMini’s Positive Airway Pressure (PAP) device has self-monitoring tools, to enable patients to see their own nightly data by downloading the AirMini 1.2 app on their iOS or Android phones and then opt in to upload data to the cloud.
Providers with patients’ using home medical equipment are able to view the same reports, charts, notes, and therapy thresholds in AirView. Clinicians are able to see patients’ nightly data, verify adherence, and spot therapy issues which gives clinicians the ability to educate and engage patients on health outcomes.