Artificial Intelligence Enhanced After-Discharge Care After Cardiothoracic Surgery

Aescia (the software) is a post discharge software companion for patients which will offer daily questions regarding their progress after Cardiothoracic surgery. For the trial the software will be hosted on a website with patients receiving a link to access the questions on a daily basis. For the finished product it will be an app downloaded from the App Store onto a smartphone. Patients will receive 5-10 questions on regarding their recovery, pain, and wound with check boxes, sliding scales, and free text answer options based on the type of question. These questions will take less than 5 minutes to answer and will be sent to patients for the first 30 days after discharge. It aims to enable early identification of patients who may be deteriorating or developing complications in the community to allow these to be treated prior to them requiring readmission. Any orange (medium) or red (high) flags are updated immediately on the base-station software monitored in hours by the departments clinical nurse specialists. These will then be escalated as required to physicians in the department. App analytics (% user engagement, % questions answered, %patients escalated, %app downtime), patient readmission rates, and patient surveys (at 30-days) will be used to assess engagement and potential user issues with the software intervention.