Medilink West Midlands has announced Entec Health as a shortlisted candidate for Partnership with NHS, in its Medical and Healthcare Business Awards 2015. The Awards event will take place at Malmaison Birmingham on 14 January 2016 and is set to start the year with a great flourish for the ventures which will be celebrated for their expertise, commitment and success.

"I am delighted that Entec Health's collaboration with the NHS to support best practice in wound care for the benefit of patients has been recognised by the panel", said Achala Patel, Founder and Managing Director of Entec Health.  

Over the past 4 years, Entec Health has developed strong engagement with a wide range of NHS Trusts to explore a new evidence-based approach in wound management practice, enabled by digital technology. 

Currently there is unacceptable variability in the standard of chronic wound care practice and outcomes achieved across the NHS nationally (1). Wound Care provision for patients with chronic wounds has a high cost to the NHS, estimated at £3billion per annum. (2,3).

Entec Health has an active NHS partnering programme which involves informing and engaging NHS stakeholders on the advantages of adopting digital wound assessment and wound informatics to address this “clinical excellence and cost-effectiveness gap” in wound management. The Silhouette system (ARANZ Medical) helps clinicians to capture, document and share digital wound images and objective, quantified wound healing data across a care pathway to support improved clinical practice, patient experience and service transformation. 

Entec Health is collaborating with innovator clinical champions and NHS Trusts to embed Silhouette as an enabler technology for evidence-based care and open up opportunities to improve the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of managing patients with chronic and acute wounds. 

The Partnership with NHS Award category is sponsored by West Midlands AHSN. You can find further details via the link.

http://www.medilinkwm.co.uk/events/medilinkwm-medical-and-healthcare-business-awards-2015

Book a Silhouette demonstration and discussion meeting with Entec Health:

Download the Silhouette Prospectus to learn more:

 Download Electronic Data Capture for Wound Care paper:

Download Silhouette King's Diabetes Foot Care Case Study:

References:

1. The need for EU standards in wound care: an Irish survey. Moore Z, Cowan S. (2005).
2. Wounds UK, 1(1): 20-8.The Smith and Nephew Foundation: Skin Breakdown – The Silent Epidemic. Posnett J, Franks P.J. (2007). The cost of skin breakdown and ulceration in the UK. Smith and Nephew Foundation, Hull.
3. The resource costs of wound care in Bradford and Airedale primary care trust in the UK. Vowden K, Vowden P, Posnett J. (2009). Journal of Wound Care; 18: 93- 102.
4. The use of electronic data capture devices in wound care settings. J.Fletcher, Wounds UK 2012, Vol 8, No 4
5. Going Digital, case study of early adopter experience with Silhouette, Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Diabetic Foot Clinic, London, UK. M.Bates, March 2013, Online Case Study Publication, NHS High Impact Innovations Showcase.

Home Care-Wound Care : Overview, Challenges and Perspectives

This is a milestone publication describing how wound care is continuing to develop in new directions across the health ecosystem in Europe. The document presents a critical assessment  of achieving effective wound care delivery in home care settings, from the perspective of organisation, health professional, patient and carer.

Against the backdrop of a growing shift towards care of patients with wounds from secondary to primary care across key regions in Europe, the report examines the prerequisite practitioner skills and knowledge needed to manage wounds in the patients’ home. In addition the authors make recommendations on achieving required standards of wound care in home care settings.

“The aim of this shift in care from secondary to primary service provision has been to promote community and home healthcare delivery, while simultaneously delivering better services, improving productivity, increasing patient safety and improving the quality of care (1).”

EWMA Home Care Wound Care (2014)

The report is produced by EWMA in collaboration with Journal of Wound Care, Initiative Chronische Wunden e.V. and the Tissue Viability Society.

The authors describe wound care service provision in UK, Germany and the Nordic Region as example models of care. There is insightful analysis on what each of the countries/regions would need to further address to deliver quality wound care successfully within home environments.

NHS England key areas for improvement

For NHS England, some of the key “improvers” for the future are outlined as follows:  

1. There are national guidelines for best practice but comprehensive implementation and ownership depends on local leadership; outcomes are not routinely identified
2. There is a need to develop integration between primary and secondary care
3. The collection of outcome data has generally been poor and cannot be robustly compared across regions.

The publication discusses best practice, clinical pathways, chronic care model, team working approach and health in the context of managing wounds in a home care setting: 

• Need for accurate and reliable patient assessment will become increasingly critical, especially where service delivery may require support of nurses without high level of wound care competency.
• Patient and carers need to be involved in the management process so that the goal of treatment and treatment progress is transparent and understood well to support good outcomes.
• Importance of wound care provision as a team effort, where a multi-disciplinary approach fosters professional collaboration to support effective, patient-centric care.

 “The provision of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines adapted to meet local needs can provide a solid base upon which to audit and evaluate practice. (1)”

EWMA Home Care Wound Care (2014)

The Chronic Care Model

The Chronic Care Model (Wagner, Austin) is proposed as a viable way forward to guide design of an effective clinical pathway for home care wound care.

 “Although work remains to be done in areas such as cost-effectiveness, these studies suggest that redesigning care using the CCM leads to improved patient care and better health outcomes” (2,3,4).

EWMA Home Care Wound Care (2014)

Technological Advances

The role of technology and its promising potential is briefly covered, in relation to use of telecommunication (SMS, texting, phone support) for self-management, online consultancy, education and monitoring. A word of caution is given in reference to telephone-based nurse-to-nurse consultations without use of digital images as there is potential risk of inappropriate treatment of wounds without this critical visual information. (5)

Telecommunication  advances and other digital applications are acknowledged as tools that may play an increasing role in supporting home care and self-management, with a need for more research to establish further evidence in this field.  

Learn more:

Discover emerging new Silhouette digital technology for wound assessment and information management that can support future wound care service delivery strategies:

References

(1) Probst S., Seppänen S., Gethin G. et al., EWMA Document: Home Care-Wound Care,. J Wound Care 2014;23 (5 Suppl.): S1–S44.

(2) Wagner, E.H., Austin, B.T., Davis, C., et al. Improving chronic illness care: translating evidence into action. Health Aff (Millwood) 2001; 20: 6, 64–78.

(3) Wagner, E.H., Davis, C., Schaefer, J., et al. A survey of leading chronic disease management programs: are they consistent with the literature? Manag Care Q 1999; 7: 3, 56–66.

(4) Coleman, K., Austin, B.T., Brach, C., et al. Evidence on the Chronic Care Model in the new millennium. Health Aff (Millwood) 2009; 28: 1, 75-85.

(5) Buckley, K.M., Adelson, L.K.,Agazio, J.G., Reducing the risks of wound consultation: adding digital images to verbal reports. J Wound Ostomy Continence Nurs 2009; 36: 2, 163–170

Firstly what is Wound Surveillance? ARANZ Medical defines Wound Surveillance as the ongoing and systematic collection, analysis and dissemination of accurate data about wound behaviour to improve healing outcomes.

Wound Surveillance is emerging as a systematic and standardised approach to wound assessment based on availability of digital wound assessment technology such as Silhouette. The Silhouette system enables clinicians to capture accurate digital information on wounds at the point of care, including wound images, 3D wound measurement and assessment notes. This builds capability to reliably document, report and share data on wound status across the organisation.

ARANZ Medical’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Mark Nixon, sums up why wound surveillance is becoming an influential concept in advanced wound management practice:

“With effective, precise wound surveillance, facilities can:

• More effectively manage wound-related risk using reliable evidence
• Improve wound-related multidisciplinary team communication across multiple and remote sites
• Oversee non-specialist wound assessments to improve point-of-care practice
• Improve patient comfort and compliance
• Make better-informed treatment decisions that enable more effective healing.

Entec Health Homepage

Entec Health Silhouette page