Maria Middelares Ghent pioneers with smart bracelet for cardiac patients
The Ghent hospital Maria Middelares is the first hospital in Belgium to use Corsano CardioWatch for monitoring cardiac patients at home after surgery. The bracelet continuously measures vital data, which can be accessed by the hospital. “We can now see how our patients are doing 24 hours a day,” says Dr. Koen Cathenis, Head of Cardiac Surgery.
After heart surgery, proper follow-up is crucial. Until now, this mainly took place through hospital consultations, but the Corsano bracelet is changing that. The bracelet measures, among other things, heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, temperature, and blood pressure. This data is automatically transmitted to a specialized care team that monitors the patient's progress.
“Patients can recover peacefully in their own environment, while we as healthcare providers still keep a finger on the pulse,” says Guylian Stevens, telemonitoring staff member. “We evaluate the trends in the measurements daily and discuss them with the medical team when necessary.”
Maria Middelares is one of the first Belgian healthcare organizations to roll out this technology and the first to use the bracelet for home monitoring after heart surgery.
“Wearables are going to fundamentally change how we organize healthcare,” says Dr. Cathenis. “We gain a more complete picture of the patient’s recovery and can intervene more quickly if something goes wrong.”
In the coming months, Maria Middelares aims to send every heart surgery patient home with the bracelet. “That quickly adds up to about 800 patients a year,” says Dr. Cathenis.