This Friday, March 4, is World Obesity Day. At the medical level, the Hôpital de la Citadelle in Liège is currently carrying out an innovative project in this area called bariatric surgery. Now, following an operation, patient follow-up can be done remotely using an application. In the future, this principle of telemonitoring is set to develop more and more.
One or two days following an operation related to obesity, the hospital room is empty. The patient is allowed to go home. This is where the “surgery kit” that the person will take home comes in. It is made up of a thermometer and a device that notably takes the heartbeat. The set developed by the Tournaisian start-up Masana is connected to the hospital via a mobile application.
At this stage, telemonitoring, planned for a period of 15 days following an intervention, is still a pilot project. With its patient population that is often quite young and connected, bariatric surgery is an ideal environment to test these tools. In place for a month, the connected system seems to benefit everyone. “The system clearly benefits everyone, be it the patient or the doctor”explains Dr. Sophie Hanoset of the abdominal surgery department. “With technology, we improve post-operative follow-up while improving the return home, in a less anxiety-provoking place that the hospital can represent. It is also support for the general practitioner who is generally requested by the patient during the post-operative follow-up”.
In the future, the aim is clearly to extend the application to other medical fields. The monitoring of several pathologies would therefore be possible on the same platform. “The pandemic has accelerated the use of telemedicine in the broad sense, and it must be seen as a real opportunity”concludes Dr. Guillaume D’hoen, deputy chief medical officer to the medical director.
An evaluation of this pilot project, free for patients, is planned within two months. One thing is already certain: the hospital that goes to the patient’s home is no longer utopia.
Stéphane Savaris
