Sensory T-shirt enables earlier hospital discharge

The device enabled patients who had undergone urological surgery for cancer feel safer and more reassured than a control group in a pilot study of 70 individuals.

The results will be presented this weekend (March 22-23, 2025) at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Madrid.  

Telemedicine allows patients and clinicians to maintain contact remotely so that care, interventions and monitoring can continue from the patient’s home.

Antonio L Pastore, Associate Professor of Urology, Sapienza University of Rome, and colleagues wanted to see if their patients could be discharged earlier than is currently standard, following robot-assisted urological surgery for cancer.

The team worked with LET's Webearable Solutions, an Italian SME specialising in telemonitoring, and designed a light t-shirt with sensors that monitor ECG, respiratory and heart rate, body temperature and more. The wearable technology sends data to an app and web-based software.

In a control group, patients were discharged as normal, three to five days after surgery. In the ‘wearable’ group they were discharged 24–36 hours earlier, two to four days after surgery, with the t-shirt, which also monitors vital signs including saturation and blood glucose. The wearable group were briefed on how the device worked and asked to wear it daily for around two weeks between 7–10 am, 2–5 pm, and 7–10 pm.