Manipal Hospitals partners with ConnectedLife, leveraging wearable technology for post-surgery care.

New Delhi: Manipal Hospitals announced a strategic partnership with ConnectedLife to use Fitbit’s wearable technology built with Google Cloud a virtual platform to monitor patient progress and empower continuity of care post-high-risk surgeries. This digital initiative aims to use wearable technology to stay connected with patients post surgeries like total knee replacement, angioplasty, cardiac bypass surgery, and other high-risk surgeries.

This technology will assist the clinical teams at Manipal Hospitals to gain a holistic view of the patient post-discharge, tailor their intervention precisely to the patient’s needs, and monitor them in their journey towards a healthy post-surgery recovery.

This digital solution can remotely capture heart rate, oxygen saturation level, and activity metrics (sleep quality, steps taken, and pain score) both pre-and post-operatively. The technology optimizes patient care via triggering reminders to take medications or participate in physiotherapy and triggering warnings if there are significant deviations outside normal physiological parameters.

Early data indicates patients on the programme have seen improved adherence to medication and exercise schedule with associated improvements in physical activity. Within this programme we are able to give patients in post-operative care a better view of their activity, sleep and other health metrics that can help empower them in managing their day-to-day wellbeing.

“Through this partnership, we are expecting post-surgery care to become seamless, as wearable technology will help us monitor certain critical parameters of patients who have undergone total knee replacement surgery, angioplasty, cardiac bypass surgery, and other high-risk surgeries,” said Dr Sudarshan Ballal, Chairman, Manipal Hospitals.

Speaking about the wearable technology, Dilip Jose, MD & CEO, Manipal Hospitals, said,"In the long run, it will help facilitate Manipal Hospitals to determine if the post-operative data collected from the ConnectedLife with Fitbit dashboard match with functional outcomes and improved patient satisfaction post-surgery. This data will allow us to understand and develop new methods in cost-effectiveness, compliance, comfort, and ease of use, all while giving us accurate data on the vitals."

“The intuitive, user-centric platform will help every person, from at-risk patients to chronic sufferers. We will be able to better understand their condition and then collaborate with care teams to achieve better health outcomes. Through its patient-centric platform, we will be able to replace lengthy manual processes with 24/7 insight-based care and monitoring, and thus enabling recovery outside of hospitals,” he added.

“We will deploy new features and capabilities based on patient and clinician feedback every two to four weeks, and maintain the strictest accountability for data acquisition, privacy and protection,” said Daryl Arnold, Founder and CEO, ConnectedLife