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Operations & systems
Remote reads of paramedic ultrasound held up in pilot
Virtual Physician Interpretation of Paramedic-Acquired Point-of-Care Ultrasound Across Device Modalities: A Mixed Methods Usability Pilot (Preprint)
JMIR Human Factors · Added 3 November 2026
A usability pilot had four physicians interpret paramedic-acquired lung and IVC ultrasound remotely via a cloud platform across laptop, tablet and smartphone, with substantial diagnostic agreement (0.68–0.80) and the laptop version rated most usable.
- Study type
- Other
- Design
- Mixed-methods usability pilot, 4 physicians × 3 sessions × 3 device modalities
- Participants
- 4 physicians, 4 clinical vignettes with lung and IVC clips
- Main finding
- Chance-adjusted agreement: laptop 0.80, smartphone 0.72, tablet 0.68; observed agreement lung 80-83%, IVC 73-75%; SUS scores 76.5 laptop, 59.5 smartphone, 55.0 tablet
- Caveat
- Very small pilot, preprint, physician raters not paramedics, no patient outcomes
- Bottom line
- Hypothesis-generating
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). Tiny — four clinicians, four vignettes — and a preprint, but remote interpretation of crew-acquired ultrasound is exactly the model rural and remote services would need.
Learning goal
Understand how device choice affects remote physician interpretation of paramedic-acquired point-of-care ultrasound in Australian prehospital care.
More
- Topic: Operations & systems
- Daily scan: 3 November 2026
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