Standardised Telemedicine Toolkit for Stroke
Introduction
This toolkit originated from work undertaken on a UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) project called ASTUTE (Acute Stroke Telemedicine: Utility, Training and Evaluation). The aim was to create a resource to support the implementation of telestroke. The resulting Standardised Telestroke Toolkit is in five sections (needs assessment, telestroke system development, telestroke system clinical and operational implementation, training, evaluation). Each section has information from:
- Guidelines: Summarises the relevant content of the American Heart Association guidelines for telemedicine in stroke1
- Research, or research recommendations: summarises findings related to implementation of telestroke from a systematic review of the research literature (see Appendix for method). Findings are translated into tasks needed for successful implementation.
- Other telestroke projects: provides the detail of implementation tasks, from a content analysis of project documentation of other telestroke systems from around the world (see Appendix for method). Examples of documents such as contracts and pathways, designed to support all stages of telestroke implementation are provided by the Lancashire and Cumbria Telestroke Network.
- Case study issues: a summary of the implementation issues and the lessons learned from the development of the Lancashire and Cumbria Telestroke Network, sourced from interviews (see Appendix for method).
- Additional resources: hyperlinks to other resources to support telestroke implementation.
