We propose in this SBIR effort to develop a mobile health software system for clinicians to conveniently and/or remotely manage and quantitatively document the healing process of chronic ulcers such as diabetic foot ulcers. Timely, frequent, and accurate documentation on wound appearance and dimension is vital for the growth assessment and tracking of treatment effectiveness. However, current practice is subjective, inconsistent, and even invasive. The absence of easily accessible, repeatable, and quantitative data affects care coordination among the medical staffs and handicaps the best treatment planning for individual patients. For chronic wound sufferers, countless routine visits and the ever increasing high treatment costs also hinders their chance of timely treatment and urgently calls for a convenient alternative. Built on a seamlessly integrated client-server framework, the proposed management software allows clinicians to easily exchange wound data with the cloud server, analyze the wound healing information, and manage patient's treatment. Together with potentially other wound sensor data, our software system offers objective and quantitative assessment on wound tissue healing status, avoiding misinterpretation or inconsistent grading among medical staffers. With large patient data to be collected, the proposed software is perceived to assist clinicians with evidence based healing prediction and more effective personalized treatment planning. Every year, approximately 6.5 million Americans suffer from chronic wounds such as diabetic foot ulcers, pressure ulcers, and venous stasis ulcers. The number is projected to grow rapidly due to the aging baby boomer population and a sharp rise in diabetes and obesity. Chronic wound healing is a lengthy process with months or even years of treatment time. Absence of personalized attention could easily cause infections and complications, leading to loss of limb. Evidence suggests that 80% of amputations are actually preventable through access of good quality and routine care. With the ever increasing high healthcare costs and the likelihood of early discharge to home care, patients are highly vulnerable to complications due to the lack of routine checkup or personalized care. All of these validates the urgent need of an alternative, convenient, and low cost clinical practice as what our mobile health app is able to provide.
The proposed mobile health software system to be developed under this SBIR project will provide clinicians a convenient yet comprehensive diagnosis and treatment tool, empowering them to provide personalized and timely care for chronic ulcer sufferers. With its unique client-server framework and many advantages over existing standard of care, the proposed management system will have a reasonably large market share in this rapidly growing multi-billion dollar industry. Lastly, the proprietary mobile health technology can be used for the treatment of other type of wounds and diseases such as burns, acute wounds, battle wounds, and endoscopic diseases.
