Post-Surgery App Boosts Patient Outcomes

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Using a tablet based app to check in with patients after surgery is the approach hospital is choosing to speed up their patients’ recoveries.

ERAS, or Enhanced Recovery After Surgery, is a tablet-based app that has shown great promise when it comes to improving patient education and improving outcomes after surgeries. According to mHealth News, the program is now being used in a partnership between McGill University Health Center's Steinberg-Bernstein Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery and Seamless MD, the apps creator.

“We are excited to be working with SeamlessMD to use technology to improve patient care,” Liane Feldman, principal investigator for the study and director of the Steinberg-Bernstein Centre for Minimally Invasive Surgery, said in a statement. “Currently, the ERAS protocol and audit tool is resource intensive and requires additional personnel. We also wanted new ways to engage patients in their recovery. We have been looking for an innovative solution to help with this.”

MobiHealth News reports researchers will be monitoring patients using the app to determine if it will improve adherence to the ERAS care processes and reduce the amount of manual labor that goes into data auditing. The evidence based app is designed to ensure better care coordination, reduce care time, and reduce complications.

The app’s care plan includes education, recovery planning, and a daily self-assessment. Patients will be prompted to enter data into the app which will then be analyzed by researchers.

mHealth News writes hospital officials describe the ERAS program as “a patient-centered approach to integrate evidence-based interventions into a coordinated, multidisciplinary care plan encompassing the entire perioperative pathway.” Programs like this one have proven to “significantly reduce hospital length of stay and patient morbidity for major surgery.”