Home monitoring and decision support for international liver transplant children.
Complications may occur after a liver transplantation, therefore proper monitoring and care in the post-operation phase plays a very important role. Sometimes, monitoring and care for patients from abroad is difficult due to a variety of reasons, e.g., different care facilities. The objective of our research for this paper is to design, implement and evaluate a home monitoring and decision support infrastructure for international children who underwent liver transplant operation. A point-of-care device and the PedsQL questionnaire were used in patients' home environment for measuring the blood parameters and assessing quality of life. By using a tablet PC and a specially developed software, the measured results were able to be transmitted to the health care providers via internet. So far, the developed infrastructure has been evaluated with four international patients/families transferring 38 records of blood test. The evaluation showed that the home monitoring and decision support infrastructure is technically feasible and is able to give timely alarm in case of abnormal situation as well as may increase parent's feeling of safety for their children.
Peter L. Reichertz Institute for Medical Informatics, University of Braunschweig - Institute of Technology - and Hannover Medical School, Muehlenpfordtstr. 23, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany.
Bianying
B
Song
Mareike
M
Schulze
Imeke
I
Goldschmidt
Reinhold
R
Haux
Ulrich
U
Baumann
Michael
M
Marschollek
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical / Q000295:instrumentation*; D058625:End Stage Liver Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects*; D008297:Male; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D066027:Transplant Recipients