WISDOM
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Wound Imaging Software and Digital platfOrM to detect and prioritise surgical wounds for routine and priority review (WISDOM)
IRAS ID
338141
Contact name
Melissa Rochon
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals, part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust (GSTFT)
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 9 months, 31 days
Research summary
Over 10 million surgical operations are performed in England annually with approximately 2.1 million having problems with wound healing, of which 500,000 lead to infection. Most of these wound problems happen after patients have been discharged from the hospital. They need to be identified and treated early to prevent the problem from worsening.
Digital remote surgical wound monitoring is beginning to be used to monitor patients’ surgical wounds at home after discharge from the hospital. This offers regular assessment when wound problems are most likely to develop. Early evaluations of digital wound monitoring suggest it improves clinical outcomes and has high patient satisfaction; however, it creates a new additional workload for clinicians.
The study will assess a new component for a digital wound monitoring platform, which has been developed and has recently received HRA approval to be validated for predictivity, sensitivity and specificity, and inter-rater reliability. The new component uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify ‘red flags’ on the images patients submit to the wound monitoring platform. Images that have a possible red flag are then identified for urgent priority review. This helps clinicians manage this new workload by allowing the most urgent cases to be reviewed first.
We will conduct a feasibility study of our new wound prioritisation module with 120 heart surgery patients at two hospitals. Each patient will be randomly allocated to receive the platform with the new detection and prioritising module (for up to 30 days after surgery) plus standard post-operative wound care or standard post-operative wound care only. Assessment through survey, interviews and platform review is at 30 days and through medical notes review, and patient phone calls at 60 days. Outcomes will assess safety, acceptability, feasibility and health economic assessment.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1
REC reference
24/NS/0005
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jan 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion