Impact of app-based technology for the management of chronic wounds

PI Title: Dr Phillip J Turner

Lead member: Oxford

"Chronic wounds affect over 1 million adults in the UK. They can negatively affect a person’s mood and general wellbeing, as well as cause chronic pain, increase the risk of infections, and affect a person’s mobility, leading to many of these patients becoming housebound. As a result, care for chronic wounds is largely provided by district nursing (DN) services within the homes of patients. In recent years chronic wounds have become more common and remain unresolved for longer. This is both a problem for individual patients and the wider NHS. The cost of looking after these wounds is rising (from 5 billion each year to the NHS) and DN services are struggling to meet demand and provide good care for all patients.

One solution to this is to improve how wounds are measured and monitored. Typically nurses measure how deep, wide, and long the wounds are every four to six weeks. A reduction of over 40% of wound surface area implies that the wound has started to heal. However, if the wound area has stayed the same or increased, the nurses need to adjust treatment or refer the patient, to better accommodate wound closure. Right now, the way nurses measure a wound is with a paper grid and pen placed directly over an active wound site. It’s not very accurate or easy. Additionally, it can be harmful for the healing process of the wound, painful for the patients and time-consuming for the nurses.

Digital wound management technologies may be an alternative method which could improve this process. Not only are these technologies predicted to save time, give more accurate measurements, and help track wound healing progress, but they may also relieve burdens on the whole wound care system. However there have been no studies of the impact on clinical care of introducing these devices, which are expensive to purchase and require training time to introduce into a service.

In our study, we want to introduce one of these wound technologies to the DN services. We are already planning to capture the change to workload. However, it is also really important to be able to capture experiences of the healthcare professionals using the technologies. Implementing new technologies is notoriously difficult in healthcare settings. There are often unforeseen barriers which can lead to waste and early abandonment of technologies is not properly addressed. We need to know if the staff in the district nursing service find the technology easy to use, and if they experience any problems. This will help DN services understand if and how to implement these technologies over a larger scale. Feedback will also be used by the technology companies themselves to adapt design to the specific needs of the DNs."

Amount awarded: £23,285