The Apple WoundCare app enables patients to remotely send images of their surgical wounds for monitoring by nurses.

A new app helps patients better monitor their wounds, scars and stitches once they are home from the hospital following surgery.

In addition to ensuring better wound care at home between office visits, the app from the Wisconsin Institute of Surgical Outcomes Research, part of the Department of Surgery at the University of Wisconsin school of medicine, is designed to reduce expensive hospital readmissions visits for patients that develop infections.

Staph infections are the most expensive hospital-acquired infection, costing an average of nearly $30,000 per wound-related readmission and an estimated $3-10 billion annually.

“If you could imagine saving the cost from the number of patients whose readmission you could prevent, that result could provide significant savings to the health system,” says general surgery resident and lead app researcher Dr. Rebecca L. Gunter.

The Apple WoundCare app enables patients to remotely send images of their surgical wounds for monitoring by nurses.

advertisement

Dr. Rebecca Gunter

To test the app, researchers gave 40 patients iPhones and instructed them in how to use the app and the smartphone camera. During the trial patients were also asked a few brief questions to gather information not easily captured through images. They also received literature on caring for surgical wounds at home and how to better look for problems such an infection.

Patients sent twice-daily updates to a group of University of Wisconsin surgical nurses who conferred with the patients and reviewed their uploaded wound images about every 10 hours. The consultations led to seven patients with surgical wound infections being treated at home or at the doctor’s office without having to be readmitted.

“Patients cannot identify infections and frequently ignore or fail to recognize the early signs of cellulitis or other wound complications and this drawback leads to the common and frustrating scenario where patients present to a routine, scheduled clinic appointment with an advanced wound complication that requires readmission, with or without reoperation,” Gunter says.

advertisement

The pilot results were promising, the institute says. The next step is to conduct larger studies and ultimately to make the WoundCare app available for widespread distribution to hospitals and other clinical care organizations. A timeline has yet to be developed.

“We set out to come up with a protocol where patients could become active participants in their care and allow us to be in closer communication and monitor their wounds after they leave the hospital,” Gunter says. “This approach allows us to intervene at an earlier time rather than waiting for patients to come back in after the problem has already developed past the point of being able to manage it on an outpatient basis.”

Keep up with latest coverage on digital healthcare by signing up for Internet Health Management News today.

Favorite

advertisement