Mobile Stroke Unit for Pre-hospital Emergency Care

Emergency department overcrowding is a major challenge in medicine, leading to a delay in diagnosis and treatment for the patient due to long waiting times. This is very relevant for diseases like acute stroke and other emergencies. The Advanced Mobile Stroke Unit is an ambulance equipped with additional devices to diagnose and treat patients at the emergency site. Patients with less severe conditions can be diagnosed and safely left at home. The objectives of this project are to investigate whether the Advanced Mobile Stroke Unit compared to a normal ambulance enables more accurate triage of patients (treatment at home vs hospital vs specialist vs A\&E). The Advanced Mobile Stroke Unit ambulance will be used in a random order of weeks and this will be compared to weeks with normal ambulances. The study will be carried out by the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust in collaboration with the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust in the East of England. The project is a collaboration with Saarland University, Germany,