Improving the Postoperative Recovery of Women with Gynecologic Cancer: Creation of a Novel, Patient-Centered, e-Health and Wearable, Mobile Applicatio

For the majority of gynecologic cancers (uterine, ovarian, cervical and vulvar), treatment begins with a complex surgery. Currently, the recovery period is plagued by high rates of hospital readmission, postoperative complication, and unscheduled emergency room visits. Although patients are closely monitored during their hospital stay, the transition to home represents a sudden decrease in monitoring and requires patients to immediately begin self-care and assessment. Yet, these patients are still very vulnerable and a patient-centered intervention is needed to better support their ability to effectively provide self-care and self-monitoring and to identify and treat those with symptoms of an impending complication. In this proposal, we will develop a patient-centered recovery, self-care and self-monitoring tool, specific to women with gynecologic cancer. We hypothesize that by directly measuring the physical activity, sleep and patient-reported symptoms of these women, deviations from the expected recovery trajectory can serve as early indicators of impending complications, leading to more timely interventions to mitigate the effects of postoperative complications and improve gynecologic cancer outcomes.