The University of Pennsylvania's Penn Medicine has launched its first app to help bariatric surgery patients better monitor their health, activities and clinical appointments before and after surgery.
Developed by clinicians in the Bariatric Surgery Program and Penn's Corporate Information Services team in partnership with Medable, the Penn Life Gained app will allow patients to organize their health information from other health apps and easily share that information their physicians, according to a university press release.
“Surgery is overwhelming by itself, but bariatric surgery is even more so when patients are presented with the long list of medical, diet, and exercise recommendations for before and after surgery," Colleen Tewksbury, Penn Bariatric Surgery Program manager, said in the release.
According to Penn Health, half of patients who have a consultation regarding bariatric surgery never go through with the procedure due to the significant health monitoring and evaluations and doctor appointments involved with having the surgery.
"Our goal is to help our patients walk through these recommendations day-by-day," Tewksbury said in the release. “Most of our patients are already using fitness and calorie tracking tools on their own, many of which are HealthKit- enabled and can send data to the Health App on the iPhone. With patient’s permission, Penn Life Gained can then read this data from the Health App, provide our patients with a single place to review their daily and weekly goals, and track their progress throughout their journey. "
