Monitoring a wound is critical, especially in diabetic patients, whose lack of sensation due to nerve damage can lead to infection of a lesion and, ultimately, amputation. Clinicians and healthcare professionals at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and other hospitals believe that the use of a new app, Swift Skin and Wound, which accurately measures and charts the progression of skin wounds, could potentially have a significant impact on clinical management and patient outcomes.
“Many of my patients are diabetic and are dealing with slow-healing foot ulcers; this app offers a way to clearly document and quantify the size of the ulcer to ensure it is actually healing, and if it is not healing, I can change strategies,” says Dr. Greg Berry, Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Montreal General Hospital of the MUHC and Chief and Mueller Chair of the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at McGill University. “I can concretely show them that what we are doing is working. They get on board and are more devoted to the treatment plan because they see it is successful,” he adds.
The app was the idea of Dr. Sheila Wang, a resident in dermatology in the Department of Medicine at McGill University and a scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC). Early in her medical career, she saw that there was a problem with the way that wounds were measured and went on to co-found the company, Swift Medical, which developed the smartphone software … read more