The National Institute of Health Stroke Scale is now commonly used by neurologists, emergency room physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel to quickly and accurately grade the severity of stroke signs. It is especially useful for evaluating acute strokes being considered for intravenous thrombolysis or other acute interventional therapies.

The NIHSS in Spanish is the same program as the NIH Stroke Scale iPhone application, but translated into Spanish. It allows medical personnel to quickly and easily perform the NIHSS without having to search for testing materials or manually having to add up the subtest scores. The interface is intuitive. Touching a scoring button adds to the current score. Touching the instructions button provides instructions for each subtest to explain details of testing. Changing between subtests in either direction is done either by scrolling or by using the Page Control. Full screen pictures are included for use in testing language. Tapping on a picture will make any following picture display. The final page shows a summary of the test results. Also included are the most recent recommendations from the American Stroke Association for the use of tPA.