Wound care
wound can be a battleground if it is severe enough, or if the natural healing mechanisms of the body are compromised by disease. In the clinic, specialists take up arms in the form of surgical interventions and advanced dressings against bacteria that attempt to colonise the area and reproduce. The current standard of care involves assessing wounds mostly by looking at them and using the TIME framework to make decisions. But what if clinicians could monitor a wound without lifting a dressing and interrupting the process, while also gaining information to better inform clinical decisions?
Conor O’Mahony is a principal researcher with
the Tyndall National Institute in Ireland where he has been involved in microsystems design and fabrication for more than two decades – and he is attempting to do just this. The ‘smart dressing’ he
Practical Patient Care /
www.practical-patient-care.com
Time to heal A
and his colleagues are developing can measure moisture to monitor when the wound dressing is full and needs changing, as well as the rate of exudation, a key metric needed to understand the healing status. This data can be reported wirelessly back to a clinician, enabling them to remotely monitor the condition of the wound without intrusively inspecting it, potentially reducing the amount of time patients need to spend in hospital, as well as the associated nursing hours. O’Mahony’s areas of expertise range from environmental monitoring to telecommunications and autonomous wound care – where he is involved in developing sensors and transducers that can interact with the outermost skin layers in a minimally invasive way. Remarkably though, it is wound care where these electronic components have been exploited the least. Part of the reason
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Technological limitations and a conservative mindset among health professionals have meant that smart wound dressings are yet to be commercialised. Elly Earls speaks with Conor O’Mahony at the Tyndall National Institute and Dr Marta Tessarolo of the University of Bologna about how we could soon reach a tipping point where technology and user need come together.
Buravleva stock; ShadeDesign/
Shutterstock.com
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