Impact of Consumer Wearables Data on Pediatric Surgery Clinicians' Management: Multi-Institutional Scenario-Based...

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Surgery
• Digital Health
• Remote Patient Monitoring

Background:

• Parents currently lack objective tools to assess their child's recovery post-surgery, relying on subjective reports.
• This subjectivity can lead to increased emergency department (ED) visits and treatment delays.
• Consumer wearable devices offer potential for objective, remote data collection for improved postoperative assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of remote wearable device data on clinicians' management of simulated pediatric postoperative patients.
• To assess changes in likelihood of ED referral and clinician confidence when objective data is added to simulated telephone encounters.

Main Methods:

• 3 simulated appendectomy recovery scenarios were presented to 34 clinicians across 5 children's hospitals.
• Scenarios were supplemented with wearable data (reassuring or concerning for complications).
• Clinicians rated likelihood of ED referral before and after data addition and reported confidence.

Main Results:

• Reassuring wearable data decreased the likelihood of ED referral (P<.01).
• Concerning wearable data increased ED referral likelihood in 1 of 3 scenarios (P<.001).
• Clinician confidence in recommendations increased significantly (76%-88%) with wearable data integration.

Conclusions:

• Wearable device data integration improved remote patient management for pediatric surgical patients.
• Objective recovery metrics from wearables can reduce healthcare use and care delays.
• Wearable technology shows promise as a postoperative monitoring tool.