World Stroke Day: POC4Triage – enabling faster stroke diagnosis and better outcomes

Oct 29, 2025

On World Stroke Day, we are shining a light on one of our European research projects focused on innovation in stroke.

Every minute counts when someone has a stroke. Yet too often patients lose precious time being transported to a hospital that cannot deliver the specialist care they need.  

The EU-funded research project POC4Triage aims to change this. It brings together leading European hospitals, researchers and innovators to develop four portable, artificial intelligence-enabled medical devices to support a faster and more accurate diagnosis of stroke and other emergencies. 

One of these devices is the Strokepointer™, developed by two Dutch organisations, Amsterdam AMC and Trianect BV. This device can detect a major stroke in under three minutes, right in the ambulance, by analysing brain activity and using artificial intelligence. Under the POC4Triage project, a new disposable EEG patch placed on the forehead below the hairline, is being developed to make stroke detection even faster, easier and more comfortable for patients. 

Over the next two years, the patch will be tested and validated across several European hospitals and ambulance services, with the long-term ambition of equipping every ambulance in Europe with this technology.  

The POC4Triage project also includes three additional devices:  

1. A diagnosis and monitoring patch to predict cardiorespiratory diseases 
2. A functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) device to monitor brain blood flow to detect strokes 
3. A handheld blood test to identify stroke type

All devices will connect through a ‘Device Hospital Connectivity Platform’, ensuring that all vital data reaches hospital teams instantly, so that they can make faster and better informed treatment decisions. 

“Time is brain. The POC4Triage project will give ambulance professionals and doctors improved tools to make faster and more accurate treatment decisions,” says SAFE’s Director General, Arlene Wilkie. “This technology represents a vital step toward improving stroke outcomes across Europe.”

For more information, please contact research@safestroke.eu or visit the POC4Triage website https://poc4triage.eu/   

POC4Triage has received funding from the European Union under grant agreement No 101137358. 

TENSION trial reveals that thrombectomy is safe to use in patients who have had a severe stroke

Mar 13, 2024

TENSION is a large international study that was launched in 2018 with the hope to extend the benefits of a treatment called mechanical thrombectomy to stroke patients who are not currently offered this treatment option.

Thrombectomy is a treatment for certain types of acute ischaemic stroke. It uses very small devices to breakdown and remove the clot from the blood vessel in the brain. It can drastically reduce the level of post-stroke disability by restoring blood flow and therefore limits brain damage.

So far, thrombectomy trials have included highly selected groups of stroke patients – those with only small blood infarcts in the brain. This means that thrombectomy treated is limited and only available to small number of people.

The TENSION project aimed to determine if thrombectomy was safe to use in patients who had a severe stroke i.e. where a large blood clot had caused the stroke.

The trial results which were simultaneously unveiled at the World Stroke Congress and published in The Lancet, found that using thrombectomy can significantly help patients with severe strokes caused by blocked blood vessels in the brain. The study’s findings are likely to pave the way for broader consideration of this approach for a greater number of patients in the future.

“This is great news and if the results drives treatment guidelines updates, more patients should experience improved outcomes after a severe stroke” says Prof Dr Götz Thomalla, Principal Investigator of the study.

TENSION has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 754640.

Funded by the EU