Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (SNUBH) and Caremind, a local healthcare company, have initiated a national project aimed at developing a digital recovery room tailored for breast cancer patients who undergo breast reconstruction surgery.

SNUBH Professor Jeong Jae-hoon from the Department of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery will lead a specialized team in developing the digital room.

This initiative is part of the government program to introduce digital healthcare technology in hospitals, especially "homespital" technology.

Homespital technology aims to provide service that allows patients to receive hospital services at home, post-discharge.

The innovative digital recovery room aims to leverage mobile and web-based artificial intelligence (AI) to empower patients to monitor various post-surgical aspects such as recovery status, condition of the surgical site, symptoms, and any anomalous signs in real-time, mirroring expert-level oversight.

This system will be clinically validated with patient groups at SNUBH, Samsung Medical Center and SMG-SNU Boramae Medical Center.

The project aims to create a homespital system that facilitates real-time reporting based on monitored data from the digital recovery room and provides patient-specific education and information.

Moreover, the initiative plans to incorporate real world data (RWD) and patient reported outcome (PRO) data, enabling patients to record and utilize their data during actual medical consultations autonomously.

"More than two out of three patients undergoing total mastectomy for breast cancer also undergo reconstructive surgery,” Professor Jeong said. “Even after patients are discharged from the hospital with reconstructive surgery, their condition needs to be monitored in a multifaceted manner for recovery, complication, and dietary management to prevent recurrence, and home-specific technology will play an important role in preventing such cases.”

Through the government project, SNUBH will develop a digital recovery room, as well as a program to provide continuous care for breast cancer patients living outside the hospital after discharge, Jeong added.

Meanwhile, breast cancer, the number one cancer among women in Korea, has recently seen a more than fourfold increase in the incidence of young women in their 20s and 30s.

As the survival rate is relatively high among major cancers, patients are interested in the quality of life after surgery. In Korea, breast reconstruction surgery after total mastectomy has been covered by health insurance since 2015.