A New Smart Mobile System for Chronic Wound Care Management

Abstract

Nonhealing wounds pose a major challenge in clinical medicine. Typical chronic wounds, such as diabetic foot ulcers and venous leg ulcers, have brought substantial difficulties to millions of patients around the world. The management of chronic wound care remains challenging in terms of precise wound size measurement, comprehensive wound assessment, timely wound healing monitoring, and efficient wound case management. Despite the rapid progress of digital health technologies in recent years, practical smart wound care management systems are yet to be developed. One of the main difficulties is in-depth communication and interaction with nurses and doctors throughout the complex wound care process. This paper presents a systematic approach for the user-centered design and development of a new smart mobile system for the management of chronic wound care that manages the nurse's task flow and meets the requirements for the care of different types of wounds in both clinic and hospital wards. The system evaluation and satisfaction review was carried out with a group of ten nurses from various clinical departments after using the system for over one month. The survey results demonstrated high effectiveness and usability of the smart mobile system for chronic wound care management, in contrast to the traditional pen-and-paper approach, in busy clinical contexts.

Keywords

• User centered design
• smart mobile system
• chronic wound care management
• human computer interaction