aceMapping the Evolving AI Preferences and Care Needs in Orthopedic Transitional Care From Hospitals to Home: Cross-Sectional Study
Abstract: Enhanced recovery after surgery protocols have shortened orthopedic hospital stays but have shifted rehabilitation and safety-monitoring tasks to patients and families after discharge. In this study, AI refers to patient-facing digital systems for orthopedic transitional care, including large language model chatbots, computer vision or platform-based monitoring tools, and wearable sensor-enabled systems for education, rehabilitation guidance, motion correction, and risk alerts. However, patient-reported preferen…
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Researchers surveyed 752 orthopedic surgery patients across 33 hospitals in Guangdong, China, asking them to rate standardized descriptions of AI functions such as chatbots, vision-based monitoring, and wearables for education, motion correction, and risk alerts during the hospital-to-home transition. By August 2026 publication, 80.3% reported willingness to use such systems, with care priorities moving from information and instructions in hospital to functional safety and rehabilitation support at home.
The high stated willingness suggests patient openness to AI-supported transitional care, but the result reflects hypothetical preferences rather than measured use of deployed tools, and the convenience sample limits generalizability. Uncertainty remains about actual usability, trust, privacy, digital accessibility, and clinician oversight when prototypes are tested in real-world home rehabilitation settings.
- Multicenter cross-sectional survey in 33 Guangdong hospitals included 752 responses after quality control from 860 submitted questionnaires.
- Participants rated standardized function-based AI descriptions including LLM chatbots, computer vision monitoring, and wearable sensor-enabled systems rather than a live prototype.
- Willingness to use AI was associated in adjusted analysis with older age, comorbidities, later rehabilitation stage, and urban residence, while unmarried, divorced, or widowed status was associated with lower willingness.
Patients recovering from orthopedic surgery reported 80.3% willingness to use patient-facing AI systems for transitional care, with priorities shifting to functional safety and rehabilitation guidance after discharge.
The rundown
The survey covered demographic and clinical characteristics, task priorities across care phases, perceived transitional care challenges, and stated willingness to use AI, informed by the technology acceptance model without direct measurement of perceived usefulness or ease of use.
Exploratory factor analysis identified three challenge dimensions and descriptive mapping showed inpatient priorities centered on information acquisition and care instruction, while home priorities centered on rehabilitation guidance and risk alerts, with logistic regression exploring associated factors.
Sources
- Peer-reviewedJMIR AI2026-08-04
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