Local doctors develop app to send surgery updates to families
Nov. 29--By the time Rosie Coleman was 6 months old, she had already had five major surgeries.
She was born with her intestines outside of her body through a hole in her belly button, a condition called omphalocele. Doctors found that her heart needed repair, too.
For each surgery, her parents, Brittany and Jereme, anxiously waited for her to be rolled out of the operating room to find out how it went.
But things changed for her nearly six-hour heart surgery: The Colemans were able to get text, photo and video updates from the operating room via a secure app called EASE.
"If I could, I would be in the operating suite," Brittany Coleman said. The next best thing was pictures of her little girl sound asleep on the operating table or the video of her tiny heart beating rapidly in her chest.
The EASE app, or Electronic Access to Surgical Events, was developed by two physicians at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.
In 2012, the hospital streamed the heart surgery of a 3-year-old on Instagram. Other parents were intrigued and wanted to get updates about their child's surgery, not necessarily broadcast to the world, but to their cellphones.
Dr. Hamish Munro and Dr. Kevin de la Roza, both pediatric cardiac anesthesiologists at Arnold Palmer, thought they had a solution. They fronted about $100,000 of their own money and developed a secure app for communicating information from the operating room.
There are other secure texting apps in the market, but most are for health-care professionals.
"Health care is moving toward greater transparency, and this is a step in the right direction," Munro said. The app takes surgery, which has traditionally been behind closed doors, "and lets you know what we're doing," Munro added.
An authorized nurse is charged with sending the updates from the operating room, and communication is one way. The updates vanish after 45 seconds to protect the patients' privacy.
Brittany Coleman recorded the updates on another phone and posted them on Rosie's Facebook page to keep friends and family in the loop, and to show it to her when she grows older. Rosie finally got to go home last week.
"One of the messages we've found important to the families is that the patient is safe asleep and under anesthesia," said de la Roza. "We've also found that families have a peak in anxiety about every 30 minutes," so the updates are sent every half hour or so, or when there's a milestone in the procedure.
"We would never communicate adverse events through the system," Munro said. "We don't want the app to replace the in-person communication."
The app is free for patients. Hospitals that want to offer it have to pay a subscription fee. The team is in talks with Nemours Children's Hospital and Florida Hospital here, and a few hospitals in other states, said de la Roza.
The team is still refining, testing and debugging the app, which was launched at Arnold Palmer earlier this year. They're still toying with ideas like keeping referring physicians in the loop or sending updates from intensive-care units or the emergency room.
The app has been used in more than 200 pediatric cardiac cases at Arnold Palmer. Like other technologies, there have been some early adaptors, and some doctors are still warming up to the idea.
"We continue to gain momentum among surgeons," de la Roza said. In the coming weeks, the developers are testing the app at the adult cardiac operating room and the cath lab.
But the main drivers of its use will be families, the developers said.
"I would really like to see more surgeons to be open in having the app used with their procedures so that when she's about 2 or 3 years old and goes in for the procedures, we're able to utilize the app," Brittany Coleman said.
nmiller@tribune.com or 407-420-5158
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