Development of tools for home monitoring in wound care: the SWANiCare project

In recent years there has been an increased focus on getting patients out of the hospital and back into their own homes. In order to reach these goals, development of technologies enabling and assisting this transfer have started to appear. To enable monitoring and treatment of patients in their own home environment, the SWANiCare project aims to develop a device that will integrate noninvasive sensors allowing for objective, continuous real-time monitoring and personalized therapy of critical parameters tailored to supporting the patient’s wound condition. In addition, the device will have the possibility to remotely release active agents to assist in the wound healing process. In order to facilitate remote monitoring and support provided by a centralized specialist to patients being cared for outside of the hospital environment, the device will be equipped with information and communication technologies (ICT). Development of products using sensors and ICT allowing for remote monitoring of wound conditions may lead to benefits for patients and medical support teams at numerous different points within the patient’s treatment pathway. Large-scale deployment and real market uptake require additional work to understand how implementation of these ICT systems will impact on the current workflows and potential changes to the roles and responsibilities of staff involved in service provision throughout the treatment pathway. If this is not understood and accounted for, then implementation may be hindered simply because organizations and staff are not ready to transform the way routine care is being provided.