Researchers develop wireless post-op care

Patients recovering at home after surgery will be monitored by nurses at hospital using video link

The innovation grant gives our Smartview team the opportunity to be at the forefront. MICHAEL MCGILLION LEAD INVESTIGATOR

It’s not quite virtual nurses delivering health care in your home, but it’s in the (cyber) ballpark.

A $12.3-million project led by Hamilton researchers aims to advance a wireless patient monitoring system — called Smartview — that will extend from the hospital to the home for those who recently had surgery.

The four-year project will focus on care for cardiac and vascular surgical patients, who are at risk of suffering pain and infection once discharged from an intensive care unit setting elsewhere in the hospital and to their homes.

“To have the capacity to check in daily to monitor a patient’s progress, and receive information about such things as weight, temperature, oxygenation and blood pressure, can help us detect potential serious complications and intervene early,” said Michael McGillion, a lead investigator in the project and an associate professor of nursing at McMaster University.

Nurses will be trained to remotely monitor post-op patients still in hospital, and then, using Bluetooth technology, for up to 30 days when patients are home. About 125 Hamilton patients will take part in the project.

Nurses will also be able to communicate with patients at home through a tablet video link to chat about progress and make visual assessments, such as observing how a surgi- cal wound is healing.

This type of continual post-op monitoring is currently only done in an ICU or recovery room but not in ward beds, and certainly not at home — a level of care that is inadequate, McGillion said.

He hopes that e-home monitoring for other post-op surgical populations will be a spinoff outcome from research for the project.

The Smartview initiative comes at a time when health-care systems are under pressure from tight budgets and an aging population, where hospitals increasingly discharge patients from beds to home more quickly — but also aim to reduce the number of readmissions.

Hamilton Health Sciences will be the primary hospital site for the project, but there is an international flavour as well — one of the partners is Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital in the U.K., where about half the patients for the research will be located.

The co-principal investigator is P.J. Devereaux, director of cardiology at McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine.

McGillion also emphasized that Mohawk College is a critical partner, with f aculty members Duane Bender (professor of software engineering technology) and Ted Scott (dean of applied research) playing key roles.

The bulk of the project funding comes from private industry, including lead technology partner Philips Canada, while the federal government’s Canadian Institutes for Health Research recently announced a $750,000 grant for Smartview through its eHealth Innovation Partnership Program.

“The innovation grant gives our Smartview team the opportunity to be at the forefront of ushering in much needed change, and move beyond traditional models of postoperative care,” McGillion said.