![]() ![]() Patients undergoing gastric bypass surgery can also be released earlier thanks to the medical sensor. This is more beneficial for recovery, because in your own environment, your rhythm is more regular, you sleep better and you’re more active. By monitoring the patients with a wearable sensor, we can find out more quickly who might develop complications.Īnd this works both ways: based on the sensor data, we might be able to discharge patients from the hospital sooner if we see that certain patterns are returning to normal. In the ICU, they’re under continuous monitoring, but on the ward, they’re only monitored a few times a day. This is often followed by a longer ward stay because the risk of complications is higher. The questions were slightly different for the two patient groups, but the overarching goal was to find out how technology can improve the recovery of a patient who has just had surgery by detecting signs of deterioration at an earlier stage.Įveline: “Patients who undergo oncological abdominal surgery spend only a short time in the ICU. Is the registration of these sensors in line with detailed ICU monitoring, and can we use the data to improve the so-called early warning system? And exactly what data would we need for this? There’s a ton of data available and can measure all kinds of things, but more isn’t always better." Earlier discharge “We wanted to gain experience with the Healthdot, a smart patch developed by Philips, and the sensor watch ELAN, which had already been tested at the hospital. All of these patients were given a sensor to register their heart rate and respiratory rate shortly after surgery, Jonna explains. But just like miners who used to take a canary down with them to alert them of high carbon monoxide levels, we now see that wearable sensors can in fact contribute to improved patient monitoring and early detection of patient deterioration.”Įveline and Jonna monitored 200 patients who underwent gastric bypass surgery and 150 patients admitted for oncology-related abdominal surgery. In acute situations, you tend to rely more on what you already know and quickly fall back into old patterns. Besides, you also have to learn to rely on a device, whereas as a doctor, you’re trained to use your clinical eye. There’s a lot more work involved in that. “Monitoring the heart rate of a healthy jogger is not the same as monitoring a sick patient. The slow roll-out of technology in hospitals is something Eveline - who is in the final stages of her intensive care physician specialization - can explain. It is a first step in improving and automating the monitoring of patients who have undergone (major) surgery. But above all, they are proud of the fact that the booklet has turned into more than just a booklet: the certification procedure for the smart patch Healthdot has now been completed and the medical sensors can be found in more and more hospitals throughout the Netherlands. Now, nearly five years later, the seasoned PhD candidates on the TRICA team have nothing but praise for the collaboration between doctor and engineer. This study is carried out within the Eindhoven MedTech Innovation Center (e/MTIC), an innovative partnership between TU/e, Catharina Hospital, Máxima Medical Center, Kempenhaeghe Epilepsy and Sleep Center and Philips.Īnd before long, Eveline and Jonna were packing boxes of medical sensors together. This is when the data stream from the new TRICA - 'Transitional Care' study - came into play. There, she worked on the predictive value of new markers in blood samples. Eveline had been collecting patient data at the Intensive Care Unit for a year when Jonna started her PhD track at the General Clinical Laboratory. The fact that Eveline’s and Jonna’s research projects would somehow be linked was not something they had predicted beforehand, the ladies explain in the staff restaurant of the Catharina Hospital. And it is not just the cover design and research that are closely linked on Tuesday, April 18, they will defend their 'teamwork' at the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, respectively, on the same day and shortly after one another. When you put the dissertations of TU/e PhD candidates Eveline Mestrom and Jonna van der Stam side by side, it becomes clear how closely their lines of research are intertwined. ![]()
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