The Future of Wound Care: New Options and Ways of Thinking

Hello, I'm Dr. Anthony Tickner. I am the medical director of St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass, and happy to be here.

Predictive analytics in wound care is something that's been around for a while, but it's actually gaining some traction. So we're seeing it more so for disease processes and for different situations where we're trying to get our patients healed quicker. So we're seeing it a lot more with companies. They're combining it with artificial intelligence and different types of modalities to help incorporate these things into electronic medical records, into the records we keep, and into digital cameras and different types of devices where we're trying to measure the wounds more accurately. So we're going to see a lot more with predictive analytics in the future.

Newer types of adjuncts and products that are out on the market now, one in particular is Reapplix and that is basically where you're taking the patient's blood, spinning it down into a centrifuge, and then you're actually making a plug. So you're making a wound, a graft, basically from that patient's own blood. So this is a company that has been around for a few years and has really gained some momentum in recent years, and we should see a lot more of them in the coming future. So another product is RenovoDerm, and their product is the Phoenix. It's a nice product. It's an electro spun 3D DCM device that you can actually put on wounds and works very well. It has no issues with acceptability or issues with the patient not being able to tolerate it because it's completely inert, completely safe for the patient to have on their wound. And it works by breaking down the alpha hydroxy acids and fatty acids. And like I said, we've been using this product for a while as a trial, and our patients have benefited from it.