title: Cost-Effective Mobile-Based Healthcare System for Managing Total Joint Arthroplasty Follow-Up.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Long-term follow-up care after total joint arthroplasty is essential to evaluate hip and knee arthroplasty outcomes, to provide information to physicians and improve arthroplasty performance, and to improve patients' health condition. In this paper, we aim to improve the communication between arthroplasty patients and physicians and to reduce the cost of follow-up controls based on mobile application technologies and cloud computing.
  
  
  METHODS
  We propose a mobile-based healthcare system that provides cost-effective follow-up controls for primary arthroplasty patients through questions about symptoms in the replaced joint, questionnaires (WOMAC and SF-36v2) and the radiological examination of knee or hip joint. We also perform a cost analysis for a set of 423 patients that were treated in the University Clinic for Orthopedics in Essen-Werden.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The estimation of healthcare costs shows significant cost savings (a reduction of 63.67% for readmission rate 5%) in both the University Clinic for Orthopedics in Essen-Werden and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia when the mobile-based healthcare system is applied.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We propose a mHealth system to reduce the cost of follow-up assessments of arthroplasty patients through evaluation of diagnosis, self-monitoring, and regular review of their health status.
authors.affiliation: Research and Innovation Department, OpenIT, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bitsaki
authors.affiliation: Research and Innovation Department, OpenIT, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Koutras
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
authors.forename: Hansjoerg
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Heep
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
authors.forename: Christos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Koutras
keywords: Cost-Benefit Analysis; Database Management Systems; Mobile Applications; Replacement Arthroplasty