From the November 2020 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

FDA gives nod to Aspenstate's AiRTouch portable X-ray
In mid-May, as the pandemic continued to spread across the country, the FDA gave Aspenstate the all-clear to distribute a portable X-ray system designed as a front-line solution for acquiring chest images.

The AiRTouch portable system directly acquires images and transmits them wirelessly to PACS through a built-in workstation. This feature, along with its portability, handheld design, and high-performance battery, is expected to help screening centers process high volumes of patients quickly during the pandemic.
"Our system allows the operator to take X-ray images without having the dedicated physical space or electrical power for a conventional X-ray system," Roberto Scorcia, VP of business development and marketing for Aspenstate, told HCB News. "Our goal with this system was to remove these barriers and make X-ray available and affordable nearly anywhere; operators are able to acquire X-ray images directly to the device, and when they are in range of a Wi-Fi signal, they are able to transmit these images to PACs."

Not all facilities housing COVID-19 patients are designed to offer conventional X-ray services, making a portable, easy to use system a helpful tool, said Scorcia.

Chest X-rays in the ER identify COVID-19 severity in adult patients
A study conducted at Mount Sinai in May determined that young and middle-aged adults with COVID-19 may benefit from a chest X-ray when taken to the emergency room.

Researchers at the New York health system found that a chest X-ray can help faster identify which patients require hospitalization and intubation based on the severity of coronavirus patterns in their lungs. They assert that the approach could enable quicker triage and treatment of high-risk patients.

"This is the first study looking at how we can use chest X-rays from the emergency room to predict how sick COVID-19 patients will get,” said first author Dr. Danielle Toussie, a resident in the department of radiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “We demonstrate how valuable X-rays can be during this pandemic because, by evaluating disease in different portions of the lungs, we can predict outcomes, which can potentially help appropriately allocate resources and expedite treatment in the most severe cases.”

The team involved in the study devised a unique scoring system from zero to six to measure the severity of the disease on the lungs and used it to assess records of 338 COVID-19 patients who were seen between March 10 and March 26. Subjects were between 21 and 50 years old and underwent imaging in the ER at The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Queens or Mount Sinai Brooklyn.

November 2020 Magazine

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