Stroke care needs speed and the system can’t keep up, so diagnosis is heading into ambulances. Pic: Getty Images
Stroke diagnosis moves into ambulances
Hospitals jammed, triage gets faster
EMVision tests tech in real emergencies
Stroke care has always lived on one simple equation: the faster you work out what’s happening in the brain, the better the chance the person keeps their life the way it was.
But in 2026, the bigger issue isn’t that hospitals don’t know what to do.
It’s that modern health systems are so jammed up that the “right diagnosis at the right time” is starting to look like a luxury product.
That’s why Mobile Stroke Units, or specialised ambulances that carry stroke diagnostic capability, are getting serious attention across parts of Europe, the US and Australia.
Data in the UK showed that when patients were assessed by a Mobile Stroke Unit, emergency department admissions fell by 86% because diagnosis happened before they reached hospital.
Professor Iris Grunwald from the University of Dundee said even a single unit could prevent around 600 unnecessary hospital admissions a year, saving 3,000 to 3,600 bed-days and roughly £1 million annually.
She said NHS emergency departments are under immense pressure, and anything that reduces admissions is instantly valuable.
In stroke care, “time equals brain”, so the benefits of diagnosis and triage starting before hospital arrival are obvious.
When specialists are in short supply
In addition, senior doctors have warned that thousands of stroke patients are ending up severely disabled or dying, because the NHS has too few specialists to treat them quickly enough.
British physician and neurologist Professor David Werring says people are “dying or living with disability unnecessarily”, because they’re not getting the correct evaluation and treatment by the right expert at the right time.
The NHS performance numbers cited are indeed grim: it took four hours and 11 minutes to get someone who had a stroke to hospital in 2024–25, and only 46.5% of patients were admitted to a specialist stroke unit within four hours of arrival.
And in some smaller hospitals, there isn’t a senior stroke specialist on duty around the clock to make decisions, especially evenings, overnight and weekends.
In the US, it’s basically the same frustrations.
Emergency medical services there often lack reliable tools to determine whether a suspected stroke is also a large vessel occlusion (LVO), which needs rapid intervention.
If crews can’t confidently triage LVO in the field, patients often go to the nearest hospital first, then get transferred again after diagnosis, losing crucial time.
But the fix isn’t cheap
Professor Grunwald also points to the sheer scale of stroke burden in the UK (someone has a stroke every five minutes).
She has put the estimated societal cost of stroke at £26 billion a year, including £8.6 billion for NHS and social care.
The tricky part is that Mobile Stroke Units are the “Rolls-Royce” version of faster diagnosis.
They work, but they’re expensive and operationally complex. You’re essentially putting a mini hospital on wheels.
How ASX-listed EMVision fits into this shift
ASX-listed EMvision Medical Devices (ASX:EMV) is developing portable brain imaging devices designed to detect and classify strokes at the bedside, in ambulances, or wherever the patient actually is.
Its first commercial product is the emu, a portable bedside brain scanner.
It’s only 100kg, compared with more than 450kg for CT, and cost effective at about US$175k compared with CT above US$400k.
The second commercial EMV product is First Responder, an ultra-light pre-hospital device under 12kg – essentially the “take it to the patient” version built for emergency settings.
It’s essentially designed to be used in standard road and air ambulances by paramedics and emergency crews to help diagnose stroke at the patient’s location, rather than waiting until the patient reaches hospital.
First Responder leverages the same underlying electromagnetic imaging technology as the company’s in-hospital emu scanner, but in a much smaller, backpack-sized design that paramedics can carry and deploy quickly.
Is there an opportunity for investors?
Research firm Morgans says the key question now is whether EMV’s systems work reliably in real emergency settings.
That’s why it points to the company’s Mobile Stroke Unit trial in Melbourne as a key de-risking step, with around 45 real-world deployments already completed alongside Ambulance Victoria and the Australian Stroke Alliance.
In Morgans’ view, chances to test brain imaging inside live ambulance workflows are rare, which makes the program globally significant, not just another controlled trial.
On the hospital side, Morgans notes the pivotal emu trial now has six sites active, with recruitment expected to complete in the first half of 2026, setting up the next big hurdle: regulatory submission.
Funding-wise, Morgans says the recent $14 million raise takes near-term capital risk off the table, giving EMVision runway to push through clinical trials and regulatory prep.
A gap that’s getting bigger, not smaller
None of this makes EMVision a sure thing.
Morgans flags the obvious risk: regulatory timelines can take longer than expected.
But the opportunity is still sitting in plain sight.
EMV is stepping into a very large, very urgent gap – one where improving the first hour of stroke care doesn’t just save lives, it saves the system from itself.
This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decision.
At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While EMVision Medical Devices is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.