Introduction (Quantifying Recovery: The Clinical Surveillance of Chronic TBI Symptom Development) (857260)

The Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana has developed a clinical surveillance tool that is modeled after macro-level surveillance approaches standard within public health informatics. In doing so, staff are now able to monitor and intervene when traumatic brain injury patients are deemed high-risk for poor socio-behavioral outcomes (suicide, drug-overdose, criminality, etc.). Patients were provided an Amazon Fire tablet that allows case managers and doctors to monitor qualitatively and quantitatively monitor the chronic brain injury symptoms. This provides the opportunity for clinical decision-making and rapid intervention for patients in crisis. Each day, patients reminded to complete one of several different validated surveys. In the case that an individual responds with heightened risk, an intervention is automatically triggered and the clinical staff is notified. This project provides unique perspective on clinical application of surveillance tools and identifies significant trends and key leading and lagging symptom interactions that predict patient outcomes.