Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine rolled out a mobile app built with Apple's CareKit to support patients before and after bariatric surgery.
The app, called Penn Life Gained, was developed by clinicians in the Bariatric Surgery Program and Penn's Corporate Information Services team, with the help of Medable. It will allow patients to collect and combine health information from the Apple Health App and other third party apps to share with Penn Medicine clinicians.
Penn Life Gained monitors patients' pre- and post-surgery progress, personalizes clinic visits from the app's collected data and assigns "to-do's." The app is able to spot areas of concern, so if a patient reports symptoms of pain, they will be prompted to contact the office and clinicians are notified on the clinician-facing app.
The care team hopes the app will not only ease stress surrounding the surgery but also help reduce readmissions, which often occur when patients go to the emergency room for post-operative pain.
"In the program right now, less than half of those who complete an initial visit eventually undergo surgery," said Noel Williams, MD, director of the Penn Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Program. "If we can set our patients up with a resource that will break down the mountain of steps and tracking into easier to manage pieces, we believe they will be more likely to achieve their goals. Since we cannot see our patients every day, we've created a platform where our clinicians can be there to support them even after they leave the clinic."
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