Digitizing Preoperative Assessment (DPA)
Smartphone app for preoperative health data collection — enabling patients to independently record and share relevant data before surgery, developed in long-term collaboration with the Swiss Muscle Foundation and University Hospital Basel.
Factsheet
- Schools involved School of Engineering and Computer Science
- Institute(s) Institute for Cybersecurity & Engineering (ICE)
- Research unit(s) ICE / Cyber Threat Intelligence
- Funding organisation Others
- Duration 01.07.2019 - 30.06.2021
- Head of project Prof. Dr. Ulrich Fiedler
- Partner Schweizerische Maligne Hyperthermine Vereinigung (SMHV)
- Keywords preoperative assessment, anesthesia, digital health, mobile app, iOS, Android, smartphone, patient data, Swiss Personalized Health Network, SPHN, Scrum, agile development, PDF export, JSON export, dat
Situation
Collecting preoperative health data relevant to anesthesia is of significant interest to both patients and anesthesia professionals. A structured digital intake process can optimize preoperative workflows, improve treatment quality, and enhance patient safety. In a workshop with chief anesthesiologists from Basel, Lausanne, and Zurich in January 2019, key requirements for a dedicated app were defined. Development of the Digitizing Preoperative Assessment (DPA) App was initiated in collaboration with the Swiss Muscle Foundation (Schweizer Muskel-Stiftung) and, in consultation with University Hospital Basel. What began as a focused development project has grown into a long-term partnership — the project has since evolved through multiple phases — DPA1 through DPA4 — each extending functionality and ensuring the app remains current with platform requirements and clinical needs.
Course of action
The project followed an agile software development methodology based on Scrum. Technical requirements were formulated as user stories with acceptance criteria, refined and prioritized in collaboration with the client. Progress meetings covered review of completed work, a feedback round, and planning of next steps. The BFH team provided the Scrum Master and developers; the clinical partner provided a Product Owner. Meetings were held online via MS Teams unless otherwise agreed. Starting from an initial workshop and requirements definition in DPA1, each subsequent phase (DPA2, DPA3, DPA4) built on the previous release — adding features, maintaining platform compliance, and incorporating feedback from clinical use.
Result
The project delivered a cross-platform smartphone application (iOS and Android) for the structured, location- and time-independent collection of personal health data relevant to preoperative anesthesia consultations. Patients can complete questionnaires independently and share their clinicial and master data directly with the clinical team. The DPA App has been available in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store since 2021 and has been continuously maintained and updated since. Across the DPA1–DPA4 project phases, key functional enhancements were introduced, including: local encrypted caching of questionnaire entries (protected by password or PIN) to prevent data loss on app restart; export of completed questionnaires as a PDF and a structured, machine-readable JSON document to support hospital-side scoring and process optimization; and progressive alignment of data structures with the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) Dataset Release for future interoperability.
Looking ahead
The DPA App is positioned as a foundation for broader integration into digital health infrastructure. Future extensions may include deeper alignment with the Swiss EPD (electronic patient record) ecosystem and full compliance with SPHN data standards, enabling seamless data exchange between patients, hospitals, and health networks. The machine-readable PDF and JSON export opens a pathway for hospitals to compute standardized risk scores and optimize preoperative processes at scale. PDF annotations could additionally be implemented on top of the JSON with relatively little effort if needed. Further development could explore direct data submission to hospital information systems or integration with national health data platforms, building on the collaboration already established with University Hospital Basel.
