Mobile stroke units for acute stroke care in the south of sweden

Abstract

A Mobile stroke unit (MSU) is a type of ambulance deployed to promote the rapid delivery of stroke care. We present a computational study using a time to treatment estimation model to analyze the potential benefits of using MSUs in Sweden’s Southern Health Care Region (SHR). In particular, we developed two scenarios (MSU1 and MSU2) each including three MSUs, which we compared with a baseline scenario containing only regular ambulances. For each MSU scenario, we assessed how much the expected time to treatment is estimated to decrease for the whole region and each subregion of SHR, and how the population is expected to benefit from the deployment of MSUs. For example, the average time to treatment in SHR was decreased with 20,4 and 15,6 minutes, respectively, in the two MSU scenarios. Moreover, our computational results show that the locations of the MSUs significantly influence what benefits can be expected. While MSU1 is expected to improve the situation for a higher share of the population, MSU2 is expected to have a higher impact on the patients who currently have the longest time to treatment.

Keywords

• driving time estimation
• mobile stroke unit
• msu
• stroke transport
• time to treatment