Rooted in community
Philips Lumify case study
Philips Lumify Case Study: Rooted in community by Dr. Shravan Verma
This is a story of Dr Shravan Verma and his experience using Lumify in his clinical practice in the homes or offices of his patients. Inspired by his personal interest in healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship, Dr. Verma subsequently founded Singapore’s in-home medical service provider, Speedoc. The moment that sparked the idea to found Speedoc, was during the time I was working in the emergency department of local hospitals in Singapore. I was seeing so many patients coming into the hospital who could easily be treated in the community or setting outside the hospital. Utilizing modern technologies, like GPS, we are now able to provide care to patients whenever they want, wherever they are, by means of a decentralized network of doctors. Speedoc aspires to be a global medical service entity, and we recognize the need to partner with long-established healthcare innovators like Philips to incorporate all the right devices and technologies, such as ultrasound, in order to provide a higher level of medical care to our patients that is compatible to those of hospitals.
A case that perfectly demonstrates the benefits of Lumify at the point-of-care in a home environment, is the case wherein it helped to confirm a patient’s diagnosis of DVT. My patient was a 91-year-old female with a known medical history of Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and recurrent stroke, which led her to remain bed-bound. When we visited her, we noticed that there was some swelling and redness in her left lower knee area, along with some warm sensation and visible signs of skin irritation, allowing us to believe that our patient could either be faced with cellulitis, which is skin infection, or suspected Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT). In addition, the swelling around her left knee was concentrated around the calf muscle, that was giving her much discomfort and pain.
DVT can be a life-threatening condition. The clot can break apart and move up to the lungs, where the patient can contract a detrimental health complication known as pulmonary embolism (PE). Time, together with an accurate diagnosis, was of the essence. We weren’t able to give our patient’s family a complete diagnosis without ultrasound imaging. We were aware that our patient had difficulty with movement and that shifting her back to hospital care would only bring her even more discomfort. Considering all factors, such as the medical status of our patient, together with the family’s preferences, we decided that the best arrangement for our patient would be to receive treatment in the comfort of their own home. This became a case in which the Philips Lumify hand-held device helped to narrow down the differential diagnosis, in order for us to provide our patient with the most appropriate treatment.
Lumify is extremely portable, all we needed was a transducer and a phone or tablet, and we could travel anywhere with it. Given that Speedoc is a mobile-based home medical service provider, this ultra-mobile ultrasound is the perfect solution for our service because of its portability and ease of use, and provides great image quality for a first-time-right diagnosis.
In the interim, the Lumify ultrasound helped confirm that the patient’s diagnosis was indeed DVT instead of cellulitis, and the patient was immediately started on anticoagulation medication, Rivaroxaban. Proven to be just as effective as having received Heparin injection, encouraging the consumption of oral anticoagulants would be the most rational approach to treat a patient of DVT. This prevented the possibility of PE, and was most probably life-saving for the patient. Lumify was definitely a huge support to Speedoc in supporting our diagnosis, giving our patient and her family the assurance they needed to proceed with the right method of patient management. If we had gone by the traditional medical route to treat our patient, we would have had to rely more on clinical examination and her medical history, but with point-of-care ultrasound using Philips Lumify, we could obtain real-time clinical information and hasten appropriate treatment.
A case study by Dr Shravan Verma MD (Singapore) Medical Doctor (Singapore) Founder, CEO Speedoc Background in Biomedical & Electrical Engineering
On a mission
With our mission to enhance care in the local communities, Philips’ commitment to innovation and healthcare enables us the ability to eliminate the obstacles separating patients and caregivers, and cross the boundaries that exist between healthcare settings and people’s homes. Considering the aging population in Singapore, more elderly will require such care arrangements in the comfort of their homes. This is what inspires health providers like us, to find support and forge new approaches that drives better care delivery.
Dr Shravan Verma uses the Lumify L12-4 linear transducer in his clinical practice. To learn more about Speedoc, visit speedoc.com
