ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Long-term follow-up care after total joint arthroplasty is essential to evaluate hip and knee arthroplasty outcomes, to provide information to physicians and improve arthroplasty performance, and to improve patients' health condition. In this paper, we aim to improve the communication between arthroplasty patients and physicians and to reduce the cost of follow-up controls based on mobile application technologies and cloud computing. METHODS: We propose a mobile-based healthcare system that provides cost-effective follow-up controls for primary arthroplasty patients through questions about symptoms in the replaced joint, questionnaires (WOMAC and SF-36v2) and the radiological examination of knee or hip joint. We also perform a cost analysis for a set of 423 patients that were treated in the University Clinic for Orthopedics in Essen-Werden. RESULTS: The estimation of healthcare costs shows significant cost savings (a reduction of 63.67% for readmission rate 5%) in both the University Clinic for Orthopedics in Essen-Werden and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia when the mobile-based healthcare system is applied. CONCLUSIONS: We propose a mHealth system to reduce the cost of follow-up assessments of arthroplasty patients through evaluation of diagnosis, self-monitoring, and regular review of their health status.
ABSTRACT
Lack of time or economic difficulties prevent chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients from communicating regularly with their physicians, thus inducing exacerbation of their chronic condition and possible hospitalization. Enhancing Chronic patients' Health Online proposes a new, sustainable and innovative business model that provides at low cost and at significant savings to the national health system, a preventive health service for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients, by combining human medical expertise with state-of-the-art online service delivery based on cloud computing, service-oriented architecture, data analytics, and mobile applications. In this article, we implement the frontend applications of the Enhancing Chronic patients' Health Online system and describe their functionality and the interfaces available to the users.
Subject(s)
Monitoring, Physiologic/instrumentation , Monitoring, Physiologic/methods , Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive/diagnosis , Telemedicine/methods , Humans , Information Dissemination/methods , Mobile Applications/trends , Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive/complications , Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive/therapy , Telemedicine/standardsABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: e-Health is a widespread healthcare practice in the medical community, supported by technology-based applications aiming to deliver health services in an efficient manner, improving the quality of life and providing a wide range of health and socio-economic benefits to patients. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the use of e-Health and mobile applications for the follow-up of major joint arthroplasty patients and the socio-economic impact of e-Health services on arthroplasty patients. METHODS: Studies published after 2000 in English language, enrolling patients who underwent total knee or hip replacement, applying e-Health solutions and highlighting the economic benefits obtained by patients, doctors and healthcare systems were considered for inclusion in the present study. RESULTS: Five studies satisfied our inclusion criteria and were included in qualitative analysis. In this paper, the use of e-Health for the follow-up of major joint arthroplasty patients and the positive impact in terms of cost, time and hospital visits reduction by applying e-Health solutions on arthroplasty patients are reviewed in detail as reported in the included studies. CONCLUSION: The majority of the included studies reported a positive impact in terms of cost, time and hospital visits reduction.