Pfew, there has been quite some excitement when it comes to the STEMO, the stroke ambulance in Berlin. The details are too specific -and way too German- for this blog, but the bottomline is this: during our evaluation of the STEMO, we noticed that STEMO was not always used as it should be. And if you do not use a tool like you should, it is hot half as effective. So we keep on trying to improve how STEMO is used in Berlin, even though the evaluation is going on.
We need to take these changes into account, so we wrote a new plan to evaluate STEMO, which was published open access the new BMC journal Neurological Research and Practice. The money to continue the evaluation was secured and we thought we were ready to go. But then reality set in: during budget negotiations a lower committee from the Berlin Senate said simply “NO” to STEMO. A day later however, the Major of Berlin used a “Machtword”, an informal veto to say that STEMO will be kept in the budget in order to finish the formal evaluation.
A true rollercoaster, which will show how directly our research has an impact on the society. The numerous calls, tweets and emails we have received in support of our now 3 STEMO ambulances over last couple of weeks underlines this even more (just the fact that a complete stranger started a petition with all nuances of the case taken into account is just mind boggeling !). But the science has to speak, and we still need to definitively evaluate the effectiveness of STEMO when used like it should be – something we will do over the next months with renewed energy in the whole team.
bob siegerink 