Manipal Hospitals introduces wearable to track activities of post-operative patients

`Digital monitoring and adherence to instructions will bring down readmissions, mortality significantly’

Patients’ post-discharge adherence to drug, diet and exercise/physiotherapy instructions from their medical practitioners and strict monitoring of their activities would reduce the rate of readmissions and mortality to a great extent, said Dr. Ranjan Shetty, the Head of Department, Cardiology at Manipal Hospitals.

“Strict monitoring is critical for the speedy recovery of patients who have gone through high-risk surgeries. Some readmissions can lead to deaths while strict monitoring is as important as medicine and it can reduce mortality,’‘ he said. To make post-surgical monitoring handy for patients, Manipal Hospitals on Thursday entered into a strategic partnership with ConnectedLife, a health management solutions provider, to introduce Fitbit, an intelligent wearable, built on Google Cloud to monitor patients’ progress after high-risk surgeries and procedures. The wearable would remotely capture heart rate, oxygen saturation level and activity metrics (sleep quality and steps taken). The device would optimise patient care via reminders to take medication or do physiotherapy or exercise and also trigger warnings if there were any significant deviations outside the normal physiological parameters of patients under monitoring, claimed the company. Manipal Hospitals is currently conducting a pilot by deploying the device on 30 of its orthopedic and cardiology patients. Over a period of three months, these patients’ physiological parameters and other details would be monitored, captured and made available on clinicians’ dashboards at the hospital for easy observation and recovery analysis. “Restoring mobility, post-surgery, is extremely critical for orthopedic and also for cardiac patients. The wearable is expected to ensure better compliance (to instructions), better pain control, motivation and a speedy recovery for patients,’‘ said Dr. Hemant K Kalyan, HOD & Consultant - Orthopaedic Surgery, Sports Medicine, Manipal Hospitals. Early data indicated patients on the programme have shown improved adherence to medication and exercise schedules, said the hospital. “Through his partnership, we are expecting post-surgery care to become seamless, as wearable technology will help us monitor certain critical parameters of patients who have undergone total knee replacement surgery, angioplasty, cardiac bypass and other high-risk surgeries,” said Dr. Sudarshal Ballal, chairman, Manipal Hospitals. Stressing the importance of integrating AI and human expertise in healthcare, Dilip Jose, MD & CEO, Manipal Hospitals said, sometime down the line, the hospital would have a large pool of data collected through the wearables which eventually would offer a great learning experience and data mining and analytical opportunities.