As mobile ultrasound technologies grow, they are becoming more frequently used in the office and on-the-go. These portable ultrasound devices are now starting to be used by emergency medical professionals to determine life-threatening injuries before victims are taken to the hospitals.
The size of a tablet, these devices are small enough to fit in the helicopters and ambulances and perform the same ultrasound images as one performed in a doctor’s office. This mobility can increase the number of lives saved by detecting earlier stages of life-threatening conditions. These EMS workers can tell whether or not a victim has a collapsed lung, internal bleeding, or whether the heart is working just by this mobile ultrasound device.
Mobile ultrasound devices are becoming more common in doctor’s offices for more routine practices, like heart monitoring. Mobile devices are starting to replace the commonly used stethoscope. One of the perks the mobile ultrasounds give doctors is that they can now see, rather than just hear what is going on in the heart when monitoring the patient’s cardiac system. The patient has the opportunity to look with the doctor during any monitoring.
Mobile devices also allow doctors to view the inside of a patient’s body non-invasively. Unlike traditional technology that uses radiation, the mobile ultrasounds can be used repeatedly when needing to examine internally. The live images that doctors can access of patient’s internal states is a good learning tool for patients, helping them to understand better what is currently going on inside their bodies.
Besides being quicker, the cost of these mobile ultrasounds are a lot cheaper than traditional ultrasounds. Being engineered for cloud-based storage makes this technology cheaper to store information and easier to share among physicians and patients. The data is able to be accessed from any mobile device, laptop, or tablet with an internet connection. There is no longer a need to store images and results on a computer’s hard-drive. Saving to a cloud-based system saves time, space, provides back-up and allows for easier and more flexible accessibility.