Jefferson Health to Pilot Digital Platform for Postoperative Monitoring

Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health, a 14-hospital health system in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, is planning to pilot a digital platform to monitor surgical patients during their postoperative recovery.

Called iPostOp, the platform features a mobile app with a supporting web-enabled application to engage patients primarily after hospital discharge during the 30-day period following surgery. Its goal is the early identification of post-surgical complications.

The product, from an Akron, Ohio-based company called MegesHealth, integrates e-knowledge and encrypted communication engines to improve patients' health literacy and establish a real-time link between patients and their medical care team outside the boundaries of healthcare institutions. 

The pilot, which will begin at Abington Hospital, will evaluate improvements in both the patient experience and productivity gains in post-surgical monitoring and patient engagement processes. The objective of the pilot is to field test the platform for a period of 90 days ahead of a potentially wider deployment. 

"Being able to send the right information at the right time is critical in enhancing care levels and recovery in all medical conditions, especially following surgeries regardless of their severity," said Edmund Pribitkin, M.D., chief medical officer of Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals (TJUH), in a prepared statement. "At TJUH, we are focused on improving the patient experience especially when challenges are identified. By leveraging, the 'right-time' preoperative and postoperative capabilities of iPostOp, we will be able to better engage our surgical patients from the time their surgery is scheduled until they are cleared by their surgeon during their last post-surgical visit.”