Q&A with ARANZ Medical Limited

Today's Wound Clinic conducted a Q&A style interview with Nicolette Le Cren, International Marketing, ARANZ Medical Limited. Nicolette discussed the role of ARANZ Medical Limited as a technology-based company serving a variety of healthcare organizations including wound care clinics.

Important Info

Company Name: ARANZ Medical Limited
Year the Company Was Founded: 2005
Contact Person for Sales: Phil MacPherson
Contact (Phone and/or email): sales@aranzmedical.com, 1 866 467 0934 or +64 3 374 6120
Location (City and State): Christchurch, New Zealand
Website: www.aranzmedical.com

1) What types of products does your company make or services does it provide to clinicians working in the wound care clinic setting?

ARANZ Medical’s vision is to improve wound care clinical practice through the application of technology. Our flagship offering is the ARANZ Medical Silhouette Product Suite for the electronic documentation of wounds. Silhouette provides a comprehensive and integrated system for imaging wounds and tracking wound healing progression. The information captured by Silhouette allows healthcare providers to better understand and improve clinical practice.

2) List and describe some of your products or services.

SilhouetteMobile
SilhouetteMobile is the point-of-care data capture component of the Silhouette Product Suite. This compact mobile device is portable, non-contact, easy to use and captures photographic images, quantitative measurements and other user-entered wound assessment data. Comprising a PDA with an attached digital scanner, SilhouetteMobile creates a 3-D view of the patient and allows accurate measurements of the wound area and depth to be made.

SilhouetteCentral
SilhouetteCentral is the central database management system of the Silhouette Product Suite that provides long term storage of wound information and provides web access for clinicians to review the collected wound information. Clinical information collected by one or more SilhouetteMobiles can be synchronized with SilhouetteCentral so that information is stored in a central location. SilhouetteCentral is also designed to interface to other Hospital Information Systems to share patient information.

3) What is your company doing in the area of technology-based wound care?

ARANZ Medical creates innovative products for the clinical management of wounds. We specialize in technology-based products that meet the clinical needs of the medical professional to allow more precise and efficient provision of wound care.

4) How do you believe your company stands out from your competitors?

ARANZ Medical is a market leader in providing an accurate, repeatable and integrated solution to measure and track wound healing progression. The solution offers a seamless transfer of data from point-of-care to health information systems. Information transfer from SilhouetteMobile to SilhouetteCentral is automatically organized so that patient information collected from any number of SilhouetteMobiles can be reviewed in one central location. This data is then able to be reviewed from anywhere in the world with internet access.

5) Are there any trends that you are currently watching in wound care and how will they affect how the clinician treats the patient in the future?

There is an increased focus for evidence-based practice with comprehensive and consistent documentation. This has been observed in wound care assessment where digital photographs are becoming the standard of care and there is an increased need for more rigorous, repeatable and reliable methods of documentation.

For example, the United States Government has set aside significant funding in the next five years for more wide spread development of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems therefore, clinicians can expect expansion in the use of these systems to record patient information. This is a trend that will influence patient record keeping enabling the clinician to be better informed about a patient’s medical history.

These trends demand a greater reliance upon technology and the benefits it delivers including, data consistency, clarity and ease of data sharing, providing significant efficiencies, saving clinician and patient time and improving quality of care in the future. The challenge however, is taking the leap to adopt technology to enjoy these benefits.

6) What is something interesting or exciting that your company is currently working on that you would like to share with our readers?

In addition to continual improvement and creation of features for our current products, ARANZ Medical has a number of advanced research and development projects to expand the Silhouette Product Suite. Recently, ARANZ Medical released a decision support engine in Silhouette. This engine allows a specific clinical protocol to be programmed allowing the clinician to access the protocol in a convenient manner at the point-of-care.

7) How is your company meeting the challenges that your customers are facing today?

Our customers around the globe are continually facing pressure to provide healthcare excellence in an environment of cost containment and with a shortage of skilled staff. Silhouette was designed to improve the efficiency of the wound care process by rapidly capturing accurate wound information directly into the patient’s electronic medical record. This allows clinicians to make more informed decisions about the most efficacious method of treating their patients.

8) Is there anything else that you would like to tell our audience about?

Silhouette has application in a variety of care settings. It is ideal for wound care centers, hospitals, home health agencies, and clinical trial organizations. Silhouette was recently noted as one of the top 10 innovations in podiatric care to help facilitate optimal outcomes in wound care.