Lay summary
I am a high-achieving doctor currently undertaking a PhD as I pursue a career in academic general surgery. My PhD project focuses on postoperative recovery, aiming to identify areas for improvement in current practice and develop a device to monitor patients after surgery.
Recovery after major abdominal surgery is a high-risk period. Delayed detection of complications often results in poor outcomes, and even in patients who do not develop complications, there are few objective measurements of recovery. Current strategies for monitoring patients after surgery are intermittent and rely on simple measurements such as heart and breathing rate.
Wearable sensors offer an opportunity to continuously monitor patients after surgery, helping to track their progress with recovery, and detect complications early, before patients deteriorate. This project aims to develop a wearable sensor device for monitoring patients after abdominal surgery through a co-design process involving patients, surgeons, nurses, and other healthcare staff.