Feasibility Trial for Postoperative Wound Surveillance Using Smartphones

Study Summary

The proposed trial is a pilot to test a smartphone application (app) that will ultimately allow patients to take and transmit photos of their postoperative wounds from home and relay other symptom information. This protocol covers the single-institution pilot study of the app's use in the period between hospital discharge and a patient's first follow-up clinic visit. The investigators will recruit vascular surgery patients either preoperatively in clinic or in the post-operative, pre-discharge period following surgery to participate in the pilot. Using a training protocol refined in the usability-testing phase of the project, patients will be trained to use the smartphone and the wound surveillance app prior to discharge. Patients will use the app from home to take send digital images of their postoperative wounds and answer a short survey, all of which will be transmitted to a secure database maintained by the University of Wisconsin (UW) Department of Surgery and accessible only to UW-employed study personnel. These data will be evaluated by one of three vascular surgery service nurse practitioners (NPs) daily and entered into the medical record. Patients who have concerning findings either in their images or in their survey answers will be contacted for further evaluation. Smartphones will be provided to patients who do not have one of their own, through a partnership with AT\&T. Sociodemographic and comorbidity data collected from the medical record will be kept at UW Department of Surgery on a secure server and accessible only to UW employed study personnel.

Primary Outcome

The percentage of participants who completed the app for the full length of the protocol (from the day of discharge to the day of scheduled clinic follow-up) without requiring a reminder phone call.

Interventions

• DEVICE Smartphone monitoring