Discovering
new ways to deliver care.

A new CareKit-enabled app from Stanford Children’s Health aims to support parents of infants with single ventricle heart defects. Link is an app that can track a newborn’s vital signs and allows physicians to more closely determine the timing of subsequent cardiac surgeries. With early detection as the ultimate goal, the app is hoping to improve outcomes for the risky and complex heart condition.

To enable comprehensive data collection, the Link team sends families home with a scale, O2 saturation monitor, and a subscription to the Link app. Once caretakers download the app, they can start tracking their newborn’s vitals on a daily basis.

Link is integrated with the EHR (Electronic Health Records) system at Stanford Children’s Health, which means that providers can see the data immediately rather than waiting for in-person visits. Link also allows parents to create and track their child's medications directly within the app, making it easy to keep all the information for their child’s care plan in one place.

In an effort to transform the entire surgical care experience, Sharp HealthCare introduced the Sharp Health Companion app to aid in pre-surgical preparation and post-surgical recovery. Since cataract surgery is one of the most commonly performed procedures, it was a natural place to begin.

Pre-surgical instructions can oftentimes be a lot to consider and remember. However, if patients don’t follow the instructions, surgeries often end up being cancelled. The Companion app addresses these issues with reminders for required tasks that are needed before a patient is wheeled in.

To make an anxiety-ridden surgery day go smoothly, the app provides reminders that help patients remember things like what to wear, and even gives directions to the surgery via Apple Maps. Educational videos also give people an idea of what to expect from their surgical experience.

Once surgery is complete, the app adjusts to accommodate post-surgical care. For cataracts patients, medication compliance can be as low as 30%, so the app aims to increase adherence through reminders, tutorial videos, and a timer to help patients use their eye drops.

In the initial pilot, the 32 patients who underwent cataract surgery achieved an average of 78.2% medication adherence during recovery.

This is a radical improvement to patient care for cataract surgery, with 93% of patients believing the app improved their overall surgery experience. Overall, care teams felt the app reduces the obstacles to delivering good patient care. Patients felt stronger connections to their care teams, and as though they were being guided from start to finish.