Wound Zoom is proud to announce two new members to its Advisory Board: Stephen Sprigle, PhD, PT and Barbara Bates-Jensen, PhD, RN, CWOCN, FAAN. These new members are accomplished experts in the field of wound care who will be able to offer Wound Zoom invaluable advice. Wound Zoom was founded with the mission to provide better tools to wound care clinicians and these board members have helped make that mission a reality.
We are excited to have these inspiring individuals on our Advisory Board and look forward to the insight that they have to offer on improving wound care.
What are the best practices in wound care documentation? Digital photography and measuring wounds are both accepted practices, recognized and supported by most wound care associations. Both present challenges in everyday practices.
Taking photos with today’s digital technology is easy. Identifying and storing these photos is not. Digital camera files do not reference the patient, making it necessary to apply a tag to the patient in the photo. This requires opening, renaming and then transferring the images to a file system. In day to day practice this can prove to be very time consuming. Associating the wrong image in the record has also been an issue. Digital cameras systems that associate the image with the patient and allow the images to be transferred directly to a database eliminate these problems.
Measuring wounds with rulers and gauges has shown to be neither accurate nor repeatable. Barbara Bates-Jensen, PhD, RN, FAAN Associate Professor of Nursing and Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles states that, “The rate that wound size changes is our best predictor of healing. Yet assessing wound size is not easy, it is difficult to get accurate, reliable wound measurements.” Also, manual measurements do not provide a record of the wound border definition. This makes accurately tracking change difficult. The use of digital camera based measurement systems offer the clinician a solution to these issues.
We live in a time when technology enhances our lives so much. Think about how prevalent it has become, from Facebook to 3D printers, GPS to text messaging; try to imagine a day where you don’t interact with a computer. If we can use technology as simple as digital camera based measurement systems to decrease cost and improve quality of care- why wouldn’t we?
I would like to take this opportunity to formally announce the release of Wound Zoom 2.0. This upgrade affects all aspects of the Wound Zoom system. We want to thank all the early adopters that provided great feedback on potential improvements. We are dedicated to having the voice of the customer drive development.
First let’s start with the hardware. We have upgraded the camera module to 5.0 megapixels, that’s almost twice the resolution of our previous model. The switches and cover have been changed to a more tactile material improving both their feel and operation. We have strengthen the case and added internal structural upgrades making Wound Zoom 2.0 even more robust.
The biggest change is to the application on the device itself. We have developed an Android based operating system to replace the previous Linux system, allowing us to vastly improve the graphic user interface. This includes a much more responsive touch screen and significantly easier to use keyboard. We have also added a standardized set of fields that can be used to describe the wound. This includes adding user definable fields that allow you to customize the system for you needs. With this database added to our camera and measurement functions you are now able to create a complete wound care record.
We have also upgraded the Analytics companion software. The Sync function has been improved and the home screen now gives you all the critical information you need to see the condition of the device and the database. The new tab driven layout makes finding the right patient information and diving in to the records much easier. The administrative tools allow you to completely customize all the pull down lists in the database. This means you can adapt the system to your needs and create a standardized documentation system that just right for your practice and setting.
With all of these improvements, we haven’t lost sight of or mission to provide the easiest to use and most cost effective system for creating and sharing proper wound care documentation. As we promised, all of these software improvements are available as a free upgrade.