AI-Powered Wound Care: Enhancing Accuracy and Efficiency
By Kevin Keenahan, Chief Product Officer at Net Health
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in wound care shows promise of transforming the field, enabling more precise diagnostics, personalized treatment plans, and significantly improved healing outcomes. Providers face many challenges, including time constraints, regulatory demands, and electronic health record (EHR) input. Though progress has been made, information sharing across colleagues and departments has continued to be a barrier to optimal care delivery, and without the correct data available, informed clinical decisions cannot be made. Considering these factors, the wound care industry requires technological advancements to help alleviate common hurdles and enhance care delivery and the patient experience. AI has the opportunity to play a role in this movement, but wound care is experiencing parallel adoption challenges with other healthcare sectors as technology progresses. Grandview Research estimates that the global wound care market will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 4.17% between 2024 and 2030, justifying the need to expand technology capabilities in this sector. Additionally, the aging population is causing an increase in patients with chronic health issues, further driving the need for more advanced care methods.
Effective wound care requires careful attention and an in-depth understanding of the numerous factors that can influence healing. By incorporating AI in wound care technology to expand knowledge bases and gather insights, providers may be able to better identify needs to address challenges and provide the best treatment options. The use of AI could enable providers to minimize guesswork and deliver more targeted treatments to increase recovery success. Advancements in wound care technology can transform care delivery and streamline clinical operations, creating a new standard for care in the industry.
Expanding wound care treatment options
As an industry that has lacked robust options for treatment, especially for more complex wounds, ensuring accuracy and personalization for individual patients is a crucial step in implementing modern technology. From the start, an accurate diagnosis can make or break the subsequent steps and outcomes of a patient’s treatment plan. AI shows potential to play an influential role in wound care, from measurement and analysis to assisted clinical decision-making for treatment plans. For example, AI algorithms could reference previous patients’ data to identify wound types and stages, increasing accuracy and improving treatment planning. Wound measurement is another essential component of this identification process. Conventional ruler-based measurement practices have a 44% error rate, but AI imaging and measurement can significantly reduce this statistic by measuring a wound accurately through automated digital planimetry. With more accurate measurements, courses of action and outcomes may look drastically different.
More personalized treatment plans are another potential benefit of AI integration in wound care. Utilizing AI to analyze an individual patient’s electronic health record data, providers could take more tailored steps to ensure the best chances of recovery. They may also be able to reference a wider range of data to determine the next best course of action, such as dressings and medications to prescribe as the wound heals.
AI may also be able to offer enhanced monitoring and feedback on treatment plans and progress. With the availability of wound monitoring applications and devices, real-time data collection and analysis can enable ongoing treatment adjustments. In the U.S., approximately 2.5 million individuals develop a pressure injury in acute care facilities every year. AI integration could help reduce the number and severity of hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) and prevent needless amputations due to diabetic ulcers by assisting with monitoring, especially in understaffed facilities. The average HAPI costs a hospital up to $70,000 per case, and HAPIs are the second most common hospital lawsuit claim after wrongful death. For diabetic ulcers, with the rate of diabetes increasing, especially among younger and disadvantaged populations, the rate of amputations has increased over the past several years, further representing the demand for AI’s assistance in addressing chronic wound conditions.
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Improved quality of life and long-term outcomes
Positive outcomes are always the goal at the end of a treatment plan. A patient’s quality of life in both the short and long term could be improved with the use of AI through reduced healing time, minimized complications, and improved patient engagement and compliance. AI-driven care can potentially accelerate healing by using accurate insights to inform care decisions, but more research needs to be done to validate the impact of AI in improving clinical outcomes. Predictive analytics may help spot potential problems early on and help avoid infections or other wound-related issues. For chronic wounds that take more time to heal, AI’s ongoing role in the care plan and process could be pivotal to improving patient outcomes.
AI and its accompanying tools may also drastically increase patient engagement and compliance. With solutions now available to support patient education and engagement, individuals can be more involved in their care journeys with expanded knowledge of their condition and treatment plan. Patient engagement is increasingly recognized as an integral part of health care and a critical component of safe, people-centered services. Informed patients are more likely to feel confident enough to report positive and negative experiences and have increased compliance with established care management plans.
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Enhancing clinical workflow
Aside from patient-centric benefits, provider organizations can also benefit from implementing AI solutions into their practices. A more streamlined workflow is a primary benefit of integrating AI into practices because it can automate routine tasks. In November 2023, 56% of nurses reported burnout, so finding ways to reduce tedious administrative tasks and allow clinicians to focus on care delivery and patient engagement can help better maintain or even improve the health care workforce. Clinician time is valuable, so allocating resources correctly is essential to a provider organization’s success.
AI has the potential to be a catalyst for the transformation of wound care and beyond. Showing promise of enabling more informed care delivery with transparency and efficiency will positively impact wound care treatment, patient outcomes, and clinical processes that can propel this sector into the future. While hesitancy remains around the adoption of AI in health care, the positives almost certainly outweigh the risks. Engaging with AI technology will help set clinical practices up for success in care delivery and operations, but most importantly, open new doors for patients in need of treatment.
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