Determining the Acceptability and Feasibility of Mobile-health Approaches to Gather Clinical Information From Patients at Home Following Hospital Discharge

Following hospital discharge on OPAT, patients will be asked to respond to two daily text messages, one in the morning and one in the evening. The message will 1) ask them to take their temperature using the provided thermometer, 2) will provide a link to a web-based survey that will ask about any symptoms as well as provide a free text response field, and 3) remind them to take and send in any photos of any skin rashes that may develop as well as their PICC-line site during dressing changes. Text messages will be sent for up to 30 days, but will be stopped sooner if the patient is readmitted to the hospital or if OPAT is discontinued. At the end of the 30 days, all patients will be sent a text message survey about usability, the time it took to complete the study tasks, suggestions for future improvements, and whether they would be willing to be interviewed via phone. A subset of the participants will be interviewed via phone to obtain more detailed feasibility data.

Additional information will also be collected from the patient and their medical record at the time of hospital discharge (patient caregiver situation, pronouns to address them, artificial material in joints or bones, biological sex, race, ethnicity, height, weight, BMI, zip code, insurance, reason for OPAT, organisms in cultures, where patient is receiving discharge medication, discharge medications, and any other diagnoses/co-morbidities) as well as 2 months after enrollment (any readmission dates and reasons, emergency room visit dates and reasons, clinic visit dates and reasons, and medication changes within 30 days of starting OPAT). These data will be collected 2 months after enrollment to ensure that all readmissions, visits, and medication changes are captured in the medical record.

The software will save time-stamped responses to all web-based surveys, photos sent in, and temperatures taken by the thermometer.

Additionally, a focus group will be conducted (via conference call) with all research team members and infectious disease physicians involved in OPAT who did not use the system to gauge their needs and to get ideas for future applications of our tools. This conference call will be video and audio recorded.

There will not be any long-term follow up for the study.