Exploring Innovative Technologies for Revolutionizing Transitional Care (TransTech)

Abstract

Transitional care refers to the set of actions designed to ensure the coordination and continuity of health care as patients transfer between different locations or different levels of care within the same location. This type of care typically focuses on supporting patients as they move between different healthcare environments, such as hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, home care, or other settings. The primary goal of transitional care is to optimize patient outcomes while also preventing or predicting complications. Transitional care includes, but not limited to, discharge planning, follow-up and care support, patient education, medication management, transfer of information and shared accountability between providers of patient care.

The transitional periods in a patient's care are often vulnerable times for their health and if they are poorly executed can result in readmissions, adverse events, patients dissatisfaction, low quality of life or even death. As the provision of transitional care requires multifaceted efforts from care institutions on both sides of the handoff, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can play an integral role in facilitating the process. The potential of technological solutions for supporting transitional care has recently atracted attention due to the potential to support various aspects of the transition, such as:

the prediction of high risk patients in order to provide targeted intervention

Provide additional information to healthcare professionals and caregivers about a patient's function in an unobtrusive way to enhance beter planning.

Facilitate shared information between interdisciplinary team members and patients/families, avoiding patient and family knowledge gaps that generate uncertainty about patients’ recovery and the services they can access at each point in the continuum of care

identification of care trajectories that can lead to personalized care planning and appropriate adjustments when needed

Goals

TranTech aims to bring together an interdisciplinary cohort of researchers engaged in research related to the use of technology for supporting different facets of transitional care. This encompasses forecasting health outcomes, navigating care trajectories, assessing and tracking patient status throughout transitions, and delivering interventions. The workshop highlights top-quality research, encouraging discussions across different fields and supporting participants' future studies with helpful feedback from peers. Connected to the main theme of the PETRA conference, participants can interact with prominent scientists focused on pervasive assistive technologies. This interaction aims to encourage the sharing of creative concepts, which could drive progress in the field.

List of Topics

In the scope of this workshop, we are interested in the exploration of the concepts, application scenarios, and development of tools. While our focus at LIST lies on personalised health recommendations and upskilling, we welcome perspectives from other domains to jointly develop a research roadmap.

Possible topics for contributions are:

• Non-invasive patient monitoring across the healthcare continuum
• Methods and tools for supporting transitional care
• Multi-source data for informing care transitions
• Patient-centered solutions for monitoring transitions
• Multidisciplinary stakeholders empowerment through technology
• Enhanced patient information for improved planning
• Predictive analytics to identify high-risk patients
• Pervasive Assistive Technologies for Transitional Care
• AI Prediction Models for health outcomes and care trajectories

Workshop Organizers