Redscar © Application for Detection of Infected Surgical Wounds

Evaluation of Redscar © Application for Detection and Monitoring Potentially Infected Surgical Wounds: a Quasy-experimental Study Protocol

Surgical site infection (SSI) is the second cause of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Its appearance increase mobidity and post-operatice hospital stays, increasing costs aswell, although its one of the most preventable HAI.

The diagnosis and detection of SSI is usually carried out late by non-especialists once the patient has consulted to the emergency services or primary care with an already obvious infections. This raise both the direct and indirect costs and saturaties the emergency department and primary care, while delays treatment and increase disconfort and morbidity.

A smart phone aplication (RedScar© ) was developped in order to detect and monitor wound infection remotely based on an automated algorithm with no medical intervention.This app allows the patient to upload a photography and answer a short questionary, the aplication will then give a diagnosis of possible infection and recommendations.

This study is the first one to use a smartphone-based automatic aplication on real patients to diagnosis wound infection . This is a prospective, single-institution not randomized quasy-experimental study protocol. The study design and protocol were reviewed and approved by Research Ethics Committee of the Balearic Islands (CEI-IB).

This paper is part of the R+D+i Project PID2020-113870GB-I00- "Desarrollo de herramientas de Soft Computing para la Ayuda al Diagnóstico Clínico y a la Gestión de Emergencias (HESOCODICE)", funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Signature of written consent.
• Age over 18 years.
• Emergency and scheduled surgery inpatients who have undergone abdominal surgery using staples to close the wound.
• Access to an android-based smartphone device, able to download the app and understand its management.
• Possibility of in person revision on the tenth postoperative day. Exclusion criteria
• Patients who do not have access to a compatible Smartphone or who are not able to use the app correctly (not being familiar with mobile devices or inability to understand how the app works or the questions asked).
• No written consent.
• Impossibility of personal revision.