RescueLink Remote Treatment in Real Time

RescueLink is the innovative software solution that enables medical incidents to be managed from anywhere — ranging from scheduled examinations to life-threatening emergencies. Thanks to RescueLink, a tele-physician (or tele-emergency physician/TNA) can establish a diagnosis and transmit treatment instructions with the assistance of on-site personnel. Time is critical in medical emergencies; therefore, RescueLink performs all actions in real time to ensure that every patient receives the best possible care.

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RescueLink provides the tele-physician with all the necessary tools and information to carry out successful remote treatment. With our solution, medical tasks such as history taking, physical examination, equipment diagnostics, diagnosis creation and treatment instructions can be completed quickly and efficiently. Through our multilateral audio-visual and textual connection between caregiver, patient and tele-physician, high quality voice and high definition video communication is available.

RescueLink also supports device-based diagnostics—such as 12-lead ECGs, electronic auscultation, pulmonary function testing, and more—through a wide range of connected medical devices. Our solution enables the tele-physician to treat the patient as if he were directly in the doctor’s treatment room Discover the full range of RescueLink’s capabilities and how we can help you place healthcare delivery for your patients on a secure and reliable foundation.

RescueLink at a glance

RescueLink enables remote treatment at the highest level by providing the tele-physician with all required information in real time, in particular data from connected medical devices.

RescueLink – Highlights

Source: GHC

Use by medical laymen

One of the distinctive features of RescueLink is its approval for use by non-medical laypersons. According to MDR Art 2, paragraph 38, “layperson means a person who does not have formal training in the relevant health care field or medical specialty”

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For lay users, RescueLink offers a wide range of support features:

Remote control of RescueLink and the medical devices—where supported—by the tele-physician to reduce the burden on the user.
Step-by-step guidance through procedures and the use of medical technology
Online guidance by the tele-physician in the case of bidirectional communication
Observing and, if necessary, correcting the procedure execution
and many more

This functionality is intended to relieve the user from operating the technology to the extent that he or she can fully concentrate on treating the patient. This helps minimize the risks associated with the use of RescueLink by lay users and thereby enables its regulatory approval. This serviceability was analyzed, evaluated and approved as part of the product approval process.

Thus, for example, a technician on an offshore wind platform, a chief mate on an oceangoing vessel, or a caregiver in a nursing home can use RescueLink without difficulty, enabling the tele-physician to remotely treat a patient.

Freedom of choice with RescueLink thanks to platform technology

RescueLink provides a platform that can be customized according to the specific needs of each customer.

RescueLink supports both cloud-based operation and on-premises deployment as a legacy application.
Hybrid operation—where the patient unit is used as a web app and the tele-physician unit as a legacy application—is readily possible.
The patient unit can be equipped with various medical devices, enabling a wide range of applications to be delivered on the basis of a single platform.
RescueLink is available on multiple hardware platforms. With RescueLink for smartphones, RescueLink enhances user mobility.

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For example, the following applications are in use:

You can find more information on the pages of the applications.

Source: GHC, iStock, bymuratdeniz

Source: GHC

Interruption-free telemedicine session!

Disconnections during a real-time telemedicine session often make remote treatment impossible. GHC researched and developed measures for implementation within the RescueLink solution to ensure telemedicine sessions are as uninterrupted as possible. We follow two paths: measures internal to the software and measures in the network environment.

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The communication module of the RescueLink software implements, among other things, algorithms for:

Data type dependent communication control:

As mentioned above, RescueLink provides the tele-physician with extensive information for use in remote treatment, such as communication audio/video, medical data in the form of real-time waveforms (ECG, plethysmogram, …), streamed audio (stethoscope), streamed video (ultrasound), or discrete values (heart rate, SpO₂, blood pressure, …). These data have different and sometimes conflicting requirements from each other. For example, audio data requires very little bandwidth, but has very high requirements for completeness and uniformity of data streams. The video data requires very high amount of data and thus the corresponding bandwidth, but in return you can very well avoid data loss and poor uniformity.

Medical data must be transmitted in full, but have lower latency and uniformity requirements. Parameters representing the quality of a data transmission are: possible bandwidth, latency, packet loss and jitter. RescueLink controls data transmission by allocating bandwidth, setting transmission priorities, adjusting compression levels, and determining buffering.

Limitation of consumption:

In a vehicle (e.g., an oceangoing vessel, long-haul aircraft, etc.), a satellite communication (SatCom) connection is typically available for all applications such as traffic control (AIS, ATC), weather forecasting, machinery maintenance monitoring, management of maritime or aviation emergencies, as well as the remote treatment of medical emergencies using RescueLink In such scenarios, RescueLink can limit its own consumption of network resources so that other applications critical to the operation of the vehicle can continue to function without disruption.

Additional measures can be taken in the network environment to help ensure an uninterrupted telemedicine session.

Channel bundling: GHC deploys routers that perform “true” intelligent bundling of all currently available telecom technologies (LTE/5G, WiFi, Satcom, etc.), providing near 100% network coverage and uninterrupted remote treatment. If a channel fails, the remote treatment continues in such a way that the user is unaware of it. Data transmission is only slightly throttled.
Prioritization of telemedicine: In the network, telemedicine data can be passed through with higher priority than data from other applications, so that the telemedicine session runs without disruptions.

One-Touch ePCR Integration!

RescueLink and ePCR software such as ZOLL AmbulancePad are so tightly integrated that incident data is exchanged automatically. Switching between applications is done with just one click on the same system. This common solution eliminates the need for a separate device.

Source: gettyImages, franckreporter

Freedom of choice with RescueLink!

With RescueLink, you don’t need to worry about the interoperability of your medical equipment with the tele-emergency physician (TNA) solution. RescueLink already supports all commonly used defibrillators and patient monitors. Adding a different defibrillator or a ventilator at a later stage is no problem at all—your investments are secure with RescueLink.

Source: GHC

Any questions? Feel free to get in touch.

To contact

RescueLink Remote Treatment in Real Time

RescueLink at a glance

RescueLink – Highlights

Use by medical laymen

Freedom of choice with RescueLink thanks to platform technology

Interruption-free telemedicine session!

One-Touch ePCR Integration!

Freedom of choice with RescueLink!

Any questions? Feel free to get in touch.

GHC Global Health Care GmbH

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