Medical Director, Burn, Trauma, and Orthopedic Rehabilitation, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital
Associate Chair, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School
Amar Dhand, MD
Associate Professor of Neurology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Digital Phenotyping: A Novel Way to Assess Outcomes for Burn Survivors after Hospitalization
Persons living with burn injuries, similar to other trauma populations, often experience complications after their injury that impact their mental health, daily functioning, and social and community participation. Despite advances in long-term care, there is a lack of research about the long-term needs of the burn survivor population. The goal of this project is to study burn survivors’ levels of depression, anxiety, and pain symptoms, as well as social activity and connectivity after leaving the hospital to better understand their long-term recovery needs.
With funding from the Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation, Schneider and his team will use new data collection technology and methods in the form of a smartphone application (app) to collect data from burn survivors after they leave the hospital. The app will send out short survey questions to participants and will also track movement and location data to measure levels of socialization and community integration. This cutting-edge data will help researchers better understand burn survivors’ long-term recovery and the results of this project will be leveraged to expand these investigations into the larger trauma population.
Jeffrey C. Schneider, MD, is the medical director of Burn, Trauma, and Orthopedic Rehabilitation at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, division chief of Comprehensive Rehabilitation, associate chair and associate professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, and director of the Rehabilitation Outcomes Group at Spaulding. He is also the project director of the NIDILRR-funded Boston Harvard Burn Injury Model System, a multi-institutional clinical and research collaboration between Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston University School of Public Health, and Shriners Hospitals for Children-Boston. His research focus is on long-term effects of burn injury.
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