Wound assessment moves into the digital age

Lord of the Rings technology takes wound assessment into the digital age

21 August 2007

Lord of the Rings technology is being used in New Zealand hospitals and wound care clinics to track the progress of wound healing.

The New Zealand company ARANZ Medical Limited has designed SilhouetteMobile which uses state-of-the-art digital photography originally developed to help create the digital creatures in the New Zealand movie trilogy.

The innovation is a world first and provides accurate and detailed monitoring of wound healing. It means district nurses, hospital staff and other health care professionals will no longer have to rely on inexact methods for assessing the healing progress of ulcers and other skin wounds.

Easy to use and inexpensive, the small battery-powered device photographs skin wounds, calculates the wound area and depth, and stores all the information on the palm-top computer. The resulting data tracks the healing progress of individual wounds.

“SilhouetteMobile has many benefits including a greatly reduced risk of wound infection or damage because there is no physical contact with the patient,” says Bruce Davey of ARANZ Medical Ltd.

“It is also easy to carry around between clinics or patients’ homes, and it can track progress of wounds through consecutive patient visits, provides photographic documentation, and has facility for entering progress notes at the bedside.”

SilhouetteMobile has been designed for use on a world-wide scale and has recently received pre-market approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States. ARANZ Medical is now looking to market the device in New Zealand and internationally.

SilhouetteMobile is a finalist in the 2007 New Zealand Health Innovation Awards (HIA) and will be competing against 21 other innovations, including five others from Canterbury.

The HIA, a joint endeavour of the Ministry of Health and ACC, were started in 2003 and recognise individuals and organisations that have developed new and innovative approaches to delivering better health services.

This year’s HIA winners will be announced at the HIA expo and gala dinner held on 10 October at the Wellington Town Hall.

Further information about the HIA is available online at http://www.healthinnovationawards.co.nz

ENDS

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