Cardiothoracic surgeon Igor Mokryk, MD, spent last week taking his family to the Polish border. This week, he treated his first gunshot wound patient at the Heart Institute in Kyiv.

It takes emergency medical services (EMS) almost four minutes longer to transport cardiac arrest patients from poor neighborhoods to the hospital versus those from high-income neighborhoods, according to a study of 2014 United States EMS data published in JAMA Network Open.

With healthcare providers under continuing pressure to provide better care at lower costs, remote cardiac monitoring devices are becoming popular and valuable patient care tools, fueling U.S. market growth expected to top more than 25 percent between 2011 and 2016.[1]  The devices enable cardiologists to monitor patients for extended periods of time outside the costly hospital environment, improving their ability to identify problems and provide early intervention that can support better outcomes and reduce the need for expensive future care.