Substitution of usual perioperative care by e-health & ICT in major abdominal surgery

In the last decade the number of surgeries increased with 30% in the Netherlands. The increase of surgeries leads to rising hospital care costs. To reduce costs, in-hospital perioperative care is increasingly reduced due to one day hospitalisations and transferred to primary care. Guidance & monitoring on recovery and resumption of (work)activities are mostly not provided in secondary and primary care. Studies showed that due to the poor quality of usual perioperative care, return-to-normal-activities/work after surgery is hampered, leading to high productivity loss costs. We hypothesize that considerable health efficiency gains can be achieved by the substitution and optimization of usual perioperative care by means of e-health and ICT. In this trial we will study the (cost)effectiveness of a transmural, perioperative care program for patients undergoing abdominal surgery.

Considerable health efficiency gains can be achieved by the substitution and optimization of usual perioperative care by means of e-health and ICT.

1. Baseline;
2. 2 weeks;

3. 4 weeks

4. 6 weeks;

5. 3 months;

6. 6 months;

7. 9. months

8. 12 months

Multidisciplinary perioperative care program including an interactive webportal. It aims to improve recovery and reduce costs by:

-SELFMANAGEMENT & EMPOWERMENT of patients during the perioperative period by supporting them with personalized pre- and postoperative recommendations to return to normal (work) activities. These recommendations are tailor made:
they are based on patient’s own input of normal preoperative activities and the surgical technique applied (using algoritms).

-MONITORING OF POSTOPERATIVE CARE: With the webportal the patient as well as all involved physicians can monitor patient’s recovery (bench mark information) and thus identify recovery problems.

-E-CONSULTATION is offered to patients to ask questions in case of recovery problems or to substitute standard postoperative consultation in outpatient clinics