Citadelle monitors remote operated patients

This Friday, March 4, marks World Obesity Day. At the medical level, the Hôpital de la Citadelle in Liege is currently implementing an innovative project in this field called Bariatric Surgery. Now, after surgery, the patient can be monitored remotely using an app. In the future, this remote monitoring principle is set to develop more and more.

One to two days after a bariatric surgery, the hospital room is empty. The patient is allowed to go home. This is where the “surgery kit” that a person will take home comes in. It consists of a thermometer and a device that noticeably takes a heartbeat. The kit, developed by Tournaisian startup Masana, was connected to the hospital via a mobile app.

At this point, remote monitoring, planned for 15 days after the intervention, is still an experimental project. Bariatric surgery is an ideal environment for testing these tools because patients are often young and connected. In place for a month, the connected system seemed to benefit everyone. “It is clear that the system benefits everyone, whether it is the patient or the doctor”Explains Dr. Sophie Hanuset of the Department of Abdominal Surgery. “Using technology, we are improving post-operative follow-up with improved return to the home, in a less worrisome setting that the hospital can represent. It is also the support for the GP that the patient generally requires during the post-operative follow-up.”

In the future, the goal is clearly to expand the application to other medical fields. So it will be possible to monitor many diseases on the same platform. “The pandemic has accelerated the use of telemedicine in the broad sense, and it must be seen as a real opportunity”concludes Dr. Guillaume D’hoen, deputy medical director for medical director.

An evaluation of this pilot, free of charge to patients, is scheduled in two months. One thing is already certain: the hospital that goes to the patient’s home is no longer a utopia.

Stephen Safaris