HealthCarePoint (HCP) has announced that the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) standards are now available to healthcare and clinical research professionals on every continent and in over 12 languages through the BlueCloud Education Network. The achievement marks a 10-year milestone for the company, which is working to standardize healthcare training and certification for healthcare professionals internationally. 

Professionals use mRS to measure the disability or dependence of patients who have suffered strokes or other neurological issues. Standardizing this scale and making it available to healthcare providers in a variety of languages worldwide makes it possible for all patients to receive evaluations based on the same criteria, so that proper care can be identified regardless of location, race or economic status. 

HCP’s BlueCloud Network connects healthcare professionals and organizations needing to access and share healthcare standardization processes, education, technology and professional information to for business and compliance purposes. Currently, more than 1,200,000 healthcare and clinical research professionals in164 countries use the BlueCloud Education Network to train and certify on globally accepted diagnostic instruments such as the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale. 

BlueCloud also allows professionals to share their personal certifications electronically across organizations, employees, sponsors and clinical trials using BlueCloud Connections. The network’s standardization process eliminates redundancies, minimizes issues with regulatory compliance requirements, improves inter-rater reliability and reduces time, resources and financial burdens for global stakeholders.

“Using the same BlueCloud standardization process that made the NIH Stroke Scale an international phenomenon, the Rankin mRS program is another BlueCloud flagship model for global healthcare and clinical research collaboration,” said Al O. Pacino, HealthCarePoint president. “Working with global industry leaders—including major universities, governments, private and not-for profit organizations—we are creating globally accepted standards without boundaries. As regulatory agencies require more and more proof of competencies and professional compliance, industry stakeholders are saving billions of dollars by using our collaborative networks to eliminate redundancies when providing that information.”

“We learn which treatments work from international trials: trials that rely on comparisons of patients' outcomes from diverse hospitals, countries and cultures. The research results are reliable only if we have a standardized outcome measure. Training and certification in the globally applied modified Rankin Scale is critical to improving healthcare,” said Prof Kennedy R Lees, M.D., Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, University of Glasgow, U.K.

“By combining programs like the NIHSS and the Rankin mRS into global healthcare and clinical research, we could ultimately improve outcomes as all healthcare providers learn to diagnose patients the same way, in a standardized fashion,” said Patrick Lyden, M.D., FAAN, FAHA, Chairman, Department of Neurology Carmen and Louis Warschaw Chairin Neurology Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

“Portuguese is spoken by 244 million people worldwide. Allowing healthcare providers to transnationally use this instrument as a standard of care ultimately will lead to better outcomes for stroke patients,” said Elsa Azevedo, M.D., Ph.D., São João Hospital Center, University of Porto, Portugal; Pedro Castro, MD, São João Hospital Center, University of Porto.