Historically, perioperative care focused primarily on intraoperative procedures, although preoperative consultation and postoperative recovery have always remained important stages within the patient pathway. Increasing population ageing and comorbidity, pressure on hospital capacity, and advances in digital health, artificial intelligence (AI), and remote monitoring are now driving a fundamental transition in anaesthesiology. The speciality is evolving from an intraoperative discipline into a broader perioperative systems speciality that increasingly recognises how each stage of the pathway influences overall patient outcomes. Anaesthesiologists are becoming central coordinators of preoperative optimisation (prehabilitation), intraoperative precision care, and postoperative recovery, including ongoing care delivered at home.
A session at Euroanaesthesia 2026 examined current and emerging applications of machine learning in summarising medical documentation and their impact on clinical efficiency and decision-making. The role of technology in home-based prehabilitation and home ICU care was assessed, exploring both benefits and limitations, alongside innovative tools for post-discharge follow-up designed to improve patient outcomes and continuity of care.
Dr Regina Pikman-Gavriely, an anaesthesiologist at Tel Aviv Medical Centre, Israel, spoke about the future (and present) of machine learning in summarising medical documentation. Early AI systems relied on inflexible rule-based methods and struggled to interpret clinical language accurately. However, recent advances now enable models to process complex clinical text and transform it into actionable information. Examples include automated discharge summaries, preoperative assessments, and ICU handovers. Such tools can standardise documentation, support clinical decision-making, and reduce administrative burden, potentially easing clinician workload and lowering the risk of burnout.
Despite these advances, important concerns remain. AI systems may generate inaccurate outputs or omit critical clinical details, with potential implications for patient safety. There are also concerns regarding bias, as unequal representation of patient populations may lead to harmful inaccuracies in documentation. These limitations underline the need for careful oversight and continuous evaluation before such technologies can be fully integrated into routine clinical practice.
Perioperative optimisation is also broadening the scope of patient-centred care in both the preoperative and postoperative phases of the pathway. This includes prehabilitation, in which patients effectively train for surgery through tailored physical, nutritional, and psychological lifestyle interventions that may improve postoperative outcomes. Dr Eva Rivas Ferreira, part of the Hospital Clínic Barcelona prehabilitation group, presented applications for home prehabilitation. She discussed practical lessons from implementing home-based prehabilitation programmes, presenting findings from the Surgifit/Barcelona model and explaining strategies used to improve adherence and maximise patient engagement. She also outlined which digital platforms have proved most successful.
Postoperative care is also advancing through wearable technologies and digital solutions that support recovery beyond the hospital setting. Devices capable of continuously monitoring vital signs and activity levels provide healthcare professionals with reliable, real-time data, while mobile applications enable patients to report pain and symptoms directly from home. Together, these innovations are enabling the development of virtual wards, allowing clinicians to monitor patients remotely, respond rapidly to emerging issues, and tailor care to individual needs. This approach enables patients to recover more comfortably at home while continuing to receive attentive and effective clinical support.
As virtual wards continue to develop, they may facilitate earlier discharge and help free valuable hospital bed capacity. However, shortages in healthcare personnel, rising costs, and a continuing decline in invasive procedures may also create pressures for hospitals to discharge patients sooner than is appropriate, potentially leading to negative consequences for patients.
Dr Lonneke Staals provide an overview of these developments in her presentation on technologies for post-discharge follow-up and care. She examined whether digital health interventions (DHIs), including mobile applications, smartphone-based tools, tablets, and other remote monitoring technologies, can safely and effectively support patients at home. Dr Staals explored whether digital home-monitoring technologies demonstrate potential benefits in reducing certain symptoms, lowering costs, and improving recovery experience and quality of life without increasing safety risks.
Source: Euroanaesthesia 2026
Image Credit: iStock
