Use and application of mHealth technologies in Perioperative Surgical Care: A review. (Preprint)

Abstract

The use of mobile health (mHealth) and advances to existing telehealth technologies has permitted the improvement of peri-operative care for patients to be adequately and safely performed away from traditional hospital settings. Telemedicine, Mobile health (mHealth) and similar technologies are a rapidly growing area, where the combination of existing technology is applied to standard care practices so the same service can be provided in the community, where the benefits seem to outweigh the risks.

The aim of this review is to present evidence for the use of established mHealth technologies in the pre- and post-operative care of surgical patients and to highlight the readiness and potential of these devices in the standard care.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted encompassing three databases: MEDLINE, Web of Science and Scopus. The reference list of systematic review articles was also scanned for additional references. After duplicates were removed and final articles selected to include in the review Quality assessment appraisal was conducted independently by the researchers using the article “Grading quality of evidence and strength of recommendations in clinical practice guidelines” by Brożek et al (1) .

From 270 retrieved articles from 2008 to current, 26 references were deemed relevant as per the inclusion criteria and their study designs varied between observational and interventional studies. 5,411 patients had surgical interventions coupled with mHealth applications across a range of specialities, where the use of mixed mHealth systems and devices was predominantly encountered (50%) followed by the use of smartphones (38%) for monitoring. Measured parameters via mHealth included vital signs, surgical site infections, pain, function, disability, and complications with a follow up range of 3 days to 3 months. Patient satisfaction was commonly measured.

With growing evidence base, mHealth technologies that leverage on existing mobile device use have shown to have an expanding role in improving aspects of peri-operative care, with promise to enhance community-based care for surgical patients.

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