A digital doctor on an NHS app saved the life of a dad who suffered a brain haemorrhage waiting for a flight home.
Adrian Lancaster, 56, was about to board a plane back to the UK after a work trip in Austria when he felt strange pains in his arm and face.
He said: “I’d turned over in bed the night before and got very intense pins and needles down my right arm and along the right side of my face. It felt like an electric shock.
“They subsided within a few minutes so I put it to the back of my mind.”
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But the next morning, on the way to the airport, the sensations returned.
“I was googling all the things it could be and a stroke came up. But I felt fine.”
At Vienna Airport, Adrian checked in for his flight to Gatwick and sat in the lounge.
“Then the sensation returned. But I wanted a second opinion to be sure I wasn’t overreacting.”
It was then he remembered the free LIVI app he and wife Jan, 67, installed on their phones months earlier that offers one-on-one video consultations with NHS doctors.
He said: “I’d seen ads for it in our doctors’ surgery. I’d signed up but hadn’t thought about it since.”
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Adrian’s GP practice in Shepperton is one of 50 in Surrey partnered with LIVI. The app offers appointments via video to a phone or tablet from 7am-10pm weekdays and 8am-4pm on weekends.
Doctors can assess you, write prescriptions and even refer you.
It is not recommend for emergencies but sitting in the lounge, Adrian, who work for a telecoms company, did not know how desperate his situation was.
“I had to tell them my symptoms and was speaking with a doctor, face-to-face, within five minutes.”
The doc – an NHS GP who also works as a digital health GP – told him he needed urgent help and asked him to alert lounge staff for an ambulance.
“He warned me it could get worse and it was definitely something neurological. He told me not to get on the plane.”
By the time an ambulance arrived, his blood pressure was dangerously high. At the hospital in Modling, an MRI scan found he had suffered a bleed on the brain due to hypertension.
After a week in hospital, Adrian returned to the UK by ambulance, as his condition meant he could not fly. And he has made an incredible recovery.
“It doesn’t bear thinking about what would’ve happened if I’d have got on that flight. The fact I was able to speak with an NHS doctor face-to-face within minutes, when I wasn’t even in the country, helped me realise how serious my condition was.
“I’ve no doubt the app saved my life.”
Pocket Doctor
THE LIVI app works by connecting patients to docs using a mobile app.
Founded in Sweden in 2015, it lets you access online consultations via your GP practice. Across Europe it has delivered 700,000 consultations.
It has partnered with surgeries in Surrey and the North West. As long as you do not need a physical examination, GPs can offer advice, prescriptions and referrals on a mobile, even on bank holidays.
Other health apps include Meningitis Now, which helps spot the signs, and Save A Life, which points you to the nearest defibrillator.
