Smart Wearables transform remote monitoring in peri-operative cancer care

The RELIANCE project aims to develop smart wearable technology for continuous monitoring of surgical cancer patients. By partnering with public and private sectors, we seek to enhance early complication detection and clinical decision support, improving patient outcomes and reducing hospital stays.

Cancer is a common and deadly disease, with surgery being a typical treatment strategy. Peri-operative care places a heavy burden on hospital staff and bed capacity, limiting the number of treatments shortly after diagnosis and potentially worsening the condition of patients waiting. Surgical cancer patients typically spend one day in the ICU and seven days in a ward before going home. Over 25% experience serious complications, and more than 10% are readmitted. Automated detection of patient health deterioration can improve outcomes.

Currently, peri-operative care teams cannot provide care outside hospital walls, and wards without continuous monitoring lack the means to keep track of vital signs. This results in prolonged hospital stays and delayed identification of deteriorating patients, both in healthcare facilities and at home. RELIANCE aims to extend peri-operative care with continuous monitoring of vital signs, both in healthcare settings and at home. This enables care teams to be promptly aware of a patient's health status, allowing timely interventions. Risk assessment of pre- and post-operative patients, along with early detection or prediction of health deterioration, can lead to improvements such as optimized preoperative condition, enhanced postoperative recovery, and higher patient satisfaction.

Within the RELIANCE-project, monitoring strategies using wearable technology for surgical patients will be developed. These strategies support early complication prediction to improve clinical decision-making. The project provides an integrated proposal for smart wearable measurement technologies for patient monitoring and clinical workflow and decision support in peri-operative care, including reliable algorithms for remote clinical decision support, user-friendly workflows, and clinical validation on outcomes.