For the first time in Israel, hundreds of medical teams from hospitals in Israel, the community, and the military are studying at the POCUS Academy, the most innovative medical simulation center in Israel, led by a senior team from Soroka University Medical Center of the Clalit Group.
Recently, during the resuscitation of a patient, a young anesthesiologist currently participating in the POCUS course held by Soroka Medical Center and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev placed an ultrasound transducer on a patient's heart and detected fluid that was pressing on it and causing it to collapse. An aspiration needle was inserted, blood was drained, and the patient returned to life. The combination of the examination and the action taken was life-saving. In another case, a young intern examined a postpartum mother hospitalized with a pneumonia diagnosis. During the physical examination, an enlarged right ventricle was detected. The patient was immediately sent for a CT scan, which showed a large blood clot in the pulmonary artery. She was urgently sent for angiography to dissolve the clot moments before resuscitation.
Dr. Lior Fuchs, a senior physician at Soroka's Internal Medicine Intensive Care Unit, and a senior team from Soroka are leading IsraPOCUS, the first academy in Israel dedicated to POCUS training. It trains teams to use ultrasound at the patient's bedside in the hospital, the community, and the field. Over 1,000 physicians from all over Israel have studied at the academy in recent years and returned to their departments and the community with advanced physical examination capabilities. The training takes place at the Center for Medical Simulations at Ben-Gurion University in small classes that combine the use of medical manikins, state-of-the-art ultrasound systems, and the most advanced simulators in the world.
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS), mobile ultrasound operated at the bedside by the treating physician, eliminates the need for the doctor's stethoscope and is a revolutionary tool used in physical examinations. It allows physicians in the community, hospitals, and the Israel Defense Forces, as well as paramedics, to “see into the patient" in cases of shock, suspected internal bleeding, and shortness of breath and even to identify problems with blood vessels.
The technology is easy to operate and gives doctors access to high-quality smart data at the patient's bedside, making them better clinicians. It has revolutionized the traditional physical examination in recent years.
Dr. Lior Fuchs, senior physician at Soroka's Internal Medicine Intensive Care Unit: “The whole world of rapid diagnosis at the patient's bedside—in the community, in the ambulance, on the battlefield, in the emergency room, in the operating room, in the intensive care unit, and in hospital wards—is being revolutionized. A test once available only to cardiologists and radiologists has become accessible to doctors at the patient's bedside thanks to the technological revolution. Smart ultrasound transducers connected to smartphones or tablets or carried on a touch screen have transformed bedside practice. We, the faculty of IsraPOCUS Academy, receive requests for consultations from former students of our academy from all over the country. Their cases have included a Thai worker from the Arava (Israel's southernmost desert) with a failing heart, a patient in deep shock in a large intensive care unit in the center of the country, and a patient with a prosthetic valve that became stuck. These are all examples of patients whose lives have been saved by course graduates who consulted us in real time about the findings of the ultrasound tests they did in their therapeutic fields."
Thousands of doctors and medical students have been trained at IsraPOCUS Academy.
The main goals of IsraPOCUS Academy:
1. Educational We aim to teach students in the clinical years, paramedics, and physicians to look into patients quickly and accurately and answer complex and urgent clinical questions immediately at the patient's bedside. The hospital doctors are joined at the academy courses by doctors from the community health funds and military doctors.
2. Research Extensive research is being conducted in medical education on POCUS alongside testing and validation of advanced automated POCUS tools based on artificial intelligence (AI). Rapid automatic calculations by these tools replace the technician and make smart measurements accessible to doctors who are not cardiologists.
3. Development and Innovation The academy encourages cooperation with Israeli and international start-ups and artificial intelligence companies to develop advanced tools and devices in the field of POCUS. The purpose of the companies is to produce platforms for the rapid and automatic interpretation of ultrasound images and guide device operators remotely in real time to obtain accurate images.
4. Remote Medicine We aim to develop remote support for teams at distant clinics and paramedics and military doctors in the field and provide answers to questions such as how to obtain an image or whether an observed pathology is significant. Community and military doctors will increasingly use remote support in the coming years. Pregnant women are already able to scan and send images of the uterus, and the use of this technology will expand to seriously ill patients who need diagnoses from home.
