How can text messages improve hospital discharges and post-discharge quality? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated using a text-based, hybrid human-computer system to monitor patients after they are discharged and ensure they are getting quality care. This study has the potential to help patients, medical professionals, and the public better understand new methods for improving patient care through technology.
For the study, the researchers developed and tested a text-based system that could be used to properly monitor patients as they are discharged from hospitals and require attention at specific care facilities. To accomplish this, the researchers tested their system over 14 months with six hospital discharge coordinators involving 127 discharged patients across 1,047 homes in Hawai’i. This also included sending more than 37,000 text messages to patients, of which the hospital received more than 8,000, far greater than what the researchers had predicted. In the end, the new system helped more than one-third of the 127 discharged patients successfully coordinate going to care facilities.
“Every step of this has been, to some extent, surprising,” said Vince Bartle, who is a PhD student in the Department of Information Science at Cornell Tech and lead author of the study. “We started by sending out 10 messages, and I thought, ‘I hope someone responds’ and ‘What if they hate me?’ But there is a real need, a real problem that’s actually happening. And I think that’s contributed to how they engage with it.”
This study comes as technology, and specifically AI, have become involved in our everyday lives. Therefore, studies like this demonstrate how technology can be used to improve failing systems, specifically healthcare, by providing patients with the proper car they need.
How will this text-based system improve patient care in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, EurekAlert!