Digital health tools can be useful post-surgery, but more high-quality research is needed

In a paper published this week, researchers examined dozens of previous studies in which patients had been monitored after discharge from the hospital.

A systematic review published this past week in npj Digital Medicine examined the use of mobile and wearable digital health interventions to monitor patients after surgery. For the paper, University of Edinburgh researchers dug into 44 studies in which patients had been postoperatively monitored with a digital health intervention (DHI) after discharge from the hospital. At the same time, the study found that reporting quality was "suboptimal," especially when it came to data security, cost assessment and patient engagement during intervention development. Health systems have increasingly begun to rely on remote patient monitoring tools and digital health interventions to keep in contact with patients after discharge from the hospital. "In order to advocate for the widespread use of digital health in the monitoring of postoperative patient recovery, additional high-quality research is needed prior to integration into the healthcare environment," wrote researchers in the npj Digital Medicine article.