Reducing Labour Intensive Wound Care through Effective Prevention of Foot Ulcers
In RELIEF, the Delft University of Technology, Leiden University Medical Center and Secuped team up to develop a home-monitoring solution for the prevention of diabetic foot ulcera, which benefits patients, but also leads to a reduction in the workload for the large group of healthcare professionals involved.
Diabetic foot ulcers are a severe and common (20.000 per year in the Netherlands) complication of diabetes, that typically requires more than 6 months of wound care and can lead to amputation in the 10% of ulcers that does not heal. With 65 home care visits per ulcer, more than 1 mln per year in the Netherlands alone, the burden for home care professionals becomes unsustainable.
With temperature monitoring at home early signs of ulcer onset can be detected timely, after which ulcers can be prevented through simple interventions like taking rest or getting better fitting footwear. In RELIEF, TU Delft, LUMC and Secuped work together on a new, automated, home monitoring solution that enables user-friendly home monitoring and automatic notification for patients and/or healthcare professionals when intervention is required to prevent ulcer development. A reduction in ulcers will lead to a reduced work load in woundcare, but successful implementation must not lead to a prohibitive burden in preventive foot care.
In the RELIEF project, three steps are taken towards successful home monitoring:
- Development of a workload reducing strategy for the integration of home monitoring in the healthcare system.
- Further development of the monitoring device and connectivity to healthcare providers to enable the strategy.
- A clinical study to determine alerting criteria for ulcer onset that balance early detection of ulcer onset and workload for the wide group of healthcare professionals involved.
