Smartphone app enables accurate stroke diagnosis

Doctors can make a stroke diagnosis using an iPhone application with the same accuracy as a one made using a medical computer workstation, a study from the University of Calgary's Faculty of Medicine revealed.  The research, which was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, has significant implications for iPhone use among physicians treating stroke patients, and is another example of how mobile health applications are enabling doctors to make medical diagnoses based on images viewed on their mobile devices. Neuro-radiologists in the study looked at 120 recent consecutive non-contrast computed tomography (NCCT) brain scans and 70 computed tomography angiogram head scans that were obtained from the Calgary Stroke Program database. The scans were read by two neuro-radiologists, on a medical diagnostic workstation and on an iPhone, and the results showed that there was a 94% to 100% rate of accuracy for diagnosing acute stroke compared with a medical workstation that has a much larger screen.