A new digital wound management solution which aims to tackle the UK’s chronic wound problem has been launched by Healthy.io, the category creator of smartphone urinalysis. The solution, used by nurses and doctors to measure and document chronic wounds digitally using a smartphone camera, could herald a step-change in management and treatment.
Chronic wounds – those that don’t heal after three months – are an astronomical burden to the NHS, with 2.2 million adults a year affected. Improving wound care is a national priority for the NHS, which created the National Wound Care Strategy Programme in 2019.
An ageing population, a huge rise in the number of people living with diabetes – a third of wounds are caused by diabetic foot ulcers – and a surge in obesity levels means that the number of people living with chronic wounds has spiralled in the last 10 years. Estimates suggest that nearly 60 per cent of all wounds will become chronic. In certain cases these wounds can take years to heal.
Current methods of measuring and documenting chronic wounds are rudimentary and have not changed significantly in years.
A 2016 audit of district nursing activity found that 39 per cent of clinical time is spent on wound care. Managing these wounds and the associated co-morbidities involved 18.6 million practice nurse visits, 10.9 million community nurse visits, 7.7 million GP visits and 3.4 million hospital outpatient visits – all this against a backdrop of a squeezed district nursing workforce with a 43 per cent drop in numbers over the last decade.
District nurses at the front line of chronic wound treatment do not have the tools they need to objectively measure and document wounds over time. Nurses in fact usually have to rely on a basic paper ruler to capture and document the size of a patient’s wound and make a decision based on size, colour and smell to gauge whether skin tissue is healing. Without an accurate method of record-keeping, clinicians struggle to share and track results over time, possibly leading to incorrect treatment, longer healing times, and growing distress for patients.
Healthy.io has unique capabilities in using computer vision technology to turn the everyday smartphone into products that simplify existing clinical pathways. Following the success of its digital urinalysis product, the company’s second product is tackling the lack of documentation and data driven decision making in the wound care space. Using a smartphone app and two ‘calibration stickers’ placed around a wound to track dimensions, clinical staff can now scan the wound and get a measurement quickly and effectively. Rather than simply taking an image, Healthy.io’s technology builds a 3D image enabling more comprehensive documentation.
Beyond the imaging component, Healthy.io enabled the digitization of best practice guidelines for wound documentation. Nurses can key in different qualitative and quantitative characteristics of a wound, including location and pain level. They can also document an administered treatment plan, reference past treatment, check previous photos and create a report summarising the wound. This data is automatically uploaded to the clinical record so that all clinicians involved in the care of the patient can see it.
The solution is currently being used by Care City and at national GP partnership Modality Partnership’s Wokingham Medical Centre. Gill Cooper, clinical lead nurse at Wokingham Medical Centre, is already using the chronic wound management solution app and said that it has had a big impact.
“Patients now feel confident that the progress of their wounds is being tracked with photographs, and they are also able to look at the photos and understand the progression or deterioration of their wound so that we can discuss treatment together.
“The biggest impact for us is having photographs of the wound. It has given us the chance to review wounds and to think about wound care before the patient even enters the room.”
Yonatan Adiri, founder and CEO of Healthy.io, said: “By streamlining documentation and providing measurements of the wound over time, this solution can promote evidence-based care decisions. This solution will also empower overburdened nurses to objectively and consistently monitor their patients more efficiently over the course of treatment.
“We are proud to see that the trust we have built with a number of NHS organisations in recent years with our urine test technology is now helping us to scale and serve more patients, again using a smartphone camera, to empower medical professionals on the frontline of wound management.”