surgery patients. After Surgery, depending on kind
of surgery, the health care professional will regularly
check the health status of the patient (usually three
times a day). This examination is usually paper
based evaluation of questionnaires or simple
patient ́s observation. When the patients are sent
home, the health care professionals will inform the
patients about the medical prescriptions and arrange
additional appointments to check on the healing
process and to detect possible complications that
could occur. Typically, the nurse will call the patient
regularly and ask about the pain level. In hospitals,
the post‐operative pain level is measured usually by
observation and questionnaires.
2.1 Market Positioning
Automatic physiological pain measurement systems
exist but are exclusively dedicated to pain evaluation
of patients during surgery under general anesthesia
or in intensive care unit (Jeanne, 2014, Broucqsault
Dédrie, 2016). These devices are based on
measurement of heart rate variability, skin
conductivity or pupillary dilatation (De jonckheere,
2015). With respect to the telemonitoring systems
used for post ‐ surgery care, there are already
different solutions on the market available to
connect doctors and patients before and after surgery
(Yoon, 2016). The solutions differ with respect to
the field of activity, the measure of pain level,
hardware integration, degree of doctor interaction
and targeted patients. Examples of competitive
solutions in comparison to the project idea are
SeamlessMD or Kardia. One identified solution,
which addresses this patient group, is “Surgery
Connect”. However, this service focuses only on
informing the parents about the process of surgery.
There is no existing solution on the market for
objective pain assessment, with additional
physiological information from hardware devices for
patients at home after surgery. Products that measure
the pain level rely on information provided by the
patients only. However, at the University Hospital in
Lille the ANI monitoring system used for pain level
measurement in unconscious patients during surgery
has been already tested also on conscious patients
during the first 2 hours right after surgery, and thus,
approved as capable of measuring on conscious
patients as well (Jeanne, 2014). Therefore, the
unique selling proposition of the project idea
addresses the integration of hardware information
together with information from the patient. The
project idea focuses in the first step on children
which undergo surgery.
2.2 Market Potential
Different trends, like the encouragement by
government bodies for digital technology in
healthcare or increasing awareness of mobile based
medical devices support the annual growth of the
mobile health market (CAGR 32.3% until 2025),
which was 33.59 billion dollar in 2018 worldwide.
The market can be segmented by technology
(Telehealthcare, Telecare, Telehealth, mHealth,
Health analytics, Digital health system) but the
project idea includes technologies from many
segments and therefore the number of all patients
undergoing a surgery as well as patients under 14
years in Europe was taken into account to get a
clearer idea of the market. The countries with the
most surgeries performed per year in Europe in
million are 1. Germany (16.8 | 1.4) 2. UK (7.9 | 1.4)
3. France (5.0 | 0.9). To estimate the market volume,
we assumed to collaborate with three hospitals in
France for the first year, 5 in France and one each in
Germany and UK for the second year and for the last
year with 10 hospitals in each country. We identified
the average surgeries performed each year per
hospital and linked them with the cost savings we
could archive with our product. The cost savings are
based on the results of a survey, which indicates a
saving of three days of hospital stay with a mobile
application for postoperative monitoring after
discharge. We assume to archive an acceptance level
for each hospital of 70% (based on results of
SurgeryConnect).
3 SOLUTION SPECIFICATIONS
In order to address the problem with inability to
measure pain objectively among post-operative
surgery patients, the team has identified medical
device management systems from medical device
companies which could provide the software with
suitable physiological signals required to identify
pain level for physicians, who can then monitor
patient ́s health state remotely. Our team would
launch the first product module focused on pain
management with eventually spanning out to other
disease areas and suitable management of those
diseases.
The solution will enable to:
Provide hospitals sufficient data (both subjective
and objective) related to pain management online
from patients´ homes online,