Post-Acute Care Perspectives: The Future of Wound Care, Part 2

In this episode of Wound Care Wednesday, Dr Johnson joins guest speakers Mike Furr and Kahlianne Jones as they continue to discuss the future of the wound care industry. This episode focuses on the results and implications of the 2025 Wound Care Market Survey and Report, particularly how the survey results address technology and the future of wound care. Mr Furr has a Masters in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and now works as a product manager with Net Health, focusing on Tissue Analytics. Ms Jones has a Bachelor of Business Administration from Duquesne University in Entrepreneurship and Information Systems Management and now works as a product manager at Net Health focused on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products.

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This podcast is for educational purposes only.

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Welcome to another Wound Care Wednesday, your go-to podcast for all things wound care, healing, and innovation. Now whether you're a health care professional, you're a caregiver, or just passionate about the advancement of wound management, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Dr Jonathan Johnson, better known as Dr Wounds, bringing you expert insights, real-world case studies, and the latest advancements in wound care, technology, research, and clinical wound medicine. Now, every Wednesday we cut through the confusion and get straight to what really matters: helping our patients heal faster, smarter, and more effectively. Expect interviews from top specialists, practical tips for our clinicians, and groundbreaking treatments that are changing the game. So whether you're tuning in from the clinic, the hospital, or you're on the go, grab your coffee, your wine, or your water, and let's dive into another week of this Wound Care Wednesday podcast. 

So again, we are super excited to have our health care technology company partner this week, Net Health. They provide specialized electronic medical records, electronic health records, and predictive analytic solutions for niche health care markets. Their software is designed to enhance clinical documentation, compliance, and patient outcomes across various specialties. We are super excited also to have Kahlianne and Mike. Both of them are superstars at Net Health and have background in health analytics, software development, as well as a background in hardware, software engineering, and medical devices and focusing really on helping us understand the data of wound care and the 2025 survey. So welcome guys. Kahlianne, ladies first, tell us a little bit about yourself and your interest in wound care and what you do at Net Health. 

Kahlianne Jones: Yeah, thanks Dr Johnson for having us. My role at Net Health is product manager of our WoundExpert EHR product, and so my role is really to work across all of our different stakeholders. I work really closely with our engineering team, who are actually the ones developing and building the software, but then translating that and working with our stakeholders, internal and external. So that includes our sales team, our implementation team, our support team who are on the front line with all of our customers, and then also our clients who—going into their clinics, watching them use the software, understanding their challenges—as well as the regulatory space. Obviously, that's a big part of any EHR, especially a specialized EMR focused on wound care. So making sure we're up to date on all of the LCD CMS changes and ensuring that our software is built to help support that in the day-to-day roles of the wound care clinic. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Great, great. So I appreciate that. So you're focusing on the efficient flow where clinicians really have the data, the background, EMR, the information, and all the analytics to make sure they can effectively take care of their patients. 

Kahlianne Jones: Absolutely. And documentation—all of the analytics, it all starts with the documentation and being able to collect that data in a structured format so that we can feed that advanced analytics and what Mike really focuses on with Tissue Analytics. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Awesome, I love it, I love it. And your partner in crime there, Mike, tell us a little bit about yourself, your role there at Net Health, and how you got into the wound care field. 

Mike Furr: Yeah, definitely. So, thanks again for having us. I'm working on the Tissue Analytics product at Net Health, so it actually plugs in and works really nicely with Kahlianne’s products on the WoundExpert side. So we're focused on imaging and AI to track wound healing over time, so automating measures of healing for wounds, making sure that we can get as much high-quality data into the patient's record so they can develop care plans off of that really solid foundation of data. 

So I came into the space from a combination of hardware and software on the engineering side, and really just interested in different chronic conditions and how software or technology in general can help there, because it just has such a huge impact on patients’ quality of life. So wound care is just a really good fit. It follows patients around everywhere across different care settings. And I think Tissue Analytics is really interesting tool to bring in AI and hopefully make workflow smoother and give clinicians a better picture of how their patients are actually doing from the home to the acute setting. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Great, great. No, definitely. I mean, I think the supportive side of understanding data, improving workflow, gathering analytics, like we've said before, is key for any clinician, right? And we all know that wound care is extremely expensive. It's a cost burden to the health care system. So having that data really helps us effectively treat our patients, improve our workflow so we can translate a lot of those results to positive wound healing processes in our patients. 

So it looks like you guys have taken the data, the background, the analytics, the EMR, etc, and you focused on a Wound Care Outlook Survey report. You know, that's really important, because obviously we need to understand the data of what happened in the past so we can effectively move forward and treat our patients with ease. So tell us a little bit about that survey report that Net Health has put together for us. What does that mean to clinicians and how do we use that information moving forward? 

Mike Furr: I think, yeah, initially, starting on the Tissue Analytics side, it was really telling the story of burnout and disparate data sources across the patient's journey towards healing. And we're really just trying to figure out, how do we give people technology in a way that does not add or just contribute to this burnout overall? It makes things easier as opposed to just adding another step within their workflow. And the very specific example is with inpatient bedside clinicians that don't typically deal with wounds, but we were trying to help them, enable them to give patients the best outcomes by referring them to the right sources. We need to give them tools like a mobile app that gets them through the workflow very quickly, as fast as possible, and gives them specialized data without them necessarily being as familiar with the field. So that's really the biggest thing that stood out for me is clinicians are burnt out because they're being asked to do so many different things across the board, and technology could hopefully take some of those things away and direct them to the specialized resources that they have or need in those cases. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: 100%, 100%. So, Kahlianne, give us a little bit more information on the survey. What was the point of the survey, the survey participants, and how that information can be utilized for clinicians moving forward? 

Kahlianne Jones: Yeah, and so in our roles as product managers, we're constantly looking for sources of information to help inform how we build our software products. And so this survey is really important because we can learn from the past and use this to influence how we're building our software. So much about how you use an EHR is not just the software itself but it's the full experience around it, and that's something we're looking at; building better education modules so that when a new staff is hired and they can onboard quicker and understand exactly what they're needing to do in their day-to-day role as it relates to the software. And also taking those advanced AI, like with Tissue Analytics and the computer modeling, and applying that in really practical ways that focus on the outcomes and the success metrics that our clients are driving towards. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Makes sense. Makes sense, definitely. So, for context for all of our audience members, colleagues, everyone listening, so the 2025 Wound Care Outlook Survey and Report, it examines the challenges, trends, and opportunities that are shaping the wound care industry. So the report is based off a survey, which was conducted in 2024 at 23 participants, and it includes the insights from C-suite executives, wound care directors, coordinators, wound, ostomy, and continence nurses—our WOCNs, invaluable. And it looked at these specific providers across hospitals, outpatient facilities, private practices, mobile wound care providers, and mobile wound care resources, and it helped us prepare for the evolving industry changes and demands that we're going to see in 2025. 

So tell us a little bit about some of the key findings that we found in the survey and how we can really implement clinical management changes to help improve some of those findings. 

Mike Furr: Yeah, I think the biggest things that stood out were workforce challenges. So those being either staffing shortages or just people feel like they're not receiving enough training to then pass along to patients through patient education. I think another one is a lot of people want to take advantage of technology in the space, but they're not exactly sure how. They don't know what tools to take advantage of, what data to look at, and what decisions to make off of the data. And that could come in the form of more direct or basic technology, like remote monitoring or just video calling with patients through home health, or advanced AI suggestions for: this patient has these comorbidities; you should treat them in this way. So those are the two highlights that I was seeing when we were getting responses from clinicians across all these different care settings and up and down the ladder of exec to bedside clinicians. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Definitely. Data is key. Kahlianne, what about some of the major challenges we saw in the study focusing on training and skill development, limited staffing, research, and resource shortages? Tell us a little bit about that. How is Net Health helping to improve that? 

Kahlianne Jones: Yeah, I think even what you're doing here, Dr Johnson—hosting a podcast, building awareness around wound care—is really important, because it's such a specialty that I think doesn't get enough attention, and I don't think that a lot of people know that this is a career path to go into. And that all just contributes to the staffing shortages, and we want to get as many people focused on this great specialty as possible. So just building awareness of wound care in general but also helping, we're really focused on helping take the complex regulations and CMS changes and everything and make it simple within our software so that it's not, that burden is not so much on the providers, not on the clinicians to understand. There is a lot to make sure that you're aware of, and we can help reduce some of that burden on our clients by building a software that has coding automation, has the methods to document these things all baked in, and help reduce some of that burden that way. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Of course, of course. And we can't leave this episode without discussing some of the impactful technology resources that we know we have coming down the pipeline, right? So, a lot of the study focused on advanced wound imaging and assessment tools. A lot of providers really were focused on utilizing those resources from a documentation standpoint. AI-powered predictive analytics were key as well as telehealth and remote monitoring, right? So Mike, we know that technology as a driver is key in focusing on the wound care EMR platform. Tell us from a Tissue Analytics standpoint how we're utilizing the advancement of wound imaging, assessment tools, AI-powered predictive analytics, telemedicine, and remote monitoring. How are we utilizing those resources from an EMR standpoint to make sure we have great patient care? 

Mike Furr: Yeah, and I think the technology really comes in 2 phases. The first is getting the highest quality data possible to work with, and AI can really help standardize across the board how we're measuring healing. So, no matter who the clinician is, they take a picture with something like Tissue Analytics, and the measures for healing are exactly the same, whether they're familiar with wounds or not. And then the second phase is, okay, now that we have really solid data, we can get suggestions or make better decisions off of that data, which is where additional AI models could come in where they're saying, okay, the patient's on a certain healing trajectory at home, but it looks like it's deteriorating now; consider shifting the care plan or bringing them into an outpatient clinic. So it starts with good data and then it goes into, okay, what decisions can you actually make off of it and then helping guide the clinician or just provide information to the clinician so that they can make those decisions that they're ready to make. They just need to see the data to know when to make them. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Great. Great. Of course, 100%. I mean, again, from a clinician standpoint, we need the data to make informed decisions clinically for our patients. So Kahlianne, to wrap up this great episode, we have the wound care outlook survey study. It was great that Net Health was able to put this information together to make sure we can all focus on what we need to do from a clinical standpoint moving forward into 2025. So to stay competitive from a provider standpoint, what do you think we need to focus on moving forward? I know that we're looking at workforce development, strategic adoption of AI, and advanced wound care technologies. What else do you think we need to utilize moving forward, and what are the take-home points from the survey? 

Kahlianne Jones: Yeah, so one of the biggest things with workforce challenges is establishing strong corporate standards and giving your staff, clinicians, physicians the tools they need to be successful and not be burdened with some of the different CMS challenges and everything going on in the market, and really giving them the tools they need to focus on the patient. The second is focusing on adoption of technology, and a change can be very difficult, but when focusing on outcomes we can understand why we need to adopt these different technologies and get a lot further ahead in the market if we see strong adoption of advanced AI, standard measurement tools, documentation standards, things like that. And then the last and really circles around all of that is focusing on those key metrics and success drivers, such as your rates of wound healing, patient satisfaction scores, and readmission rates. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Great. And so listen, I really think these are the key points: understanding the survey, understanding the results, understanding the key points are key, because really the whole point of what we're doing from a clinician standpoint and from a field standpoint is that we are aligning practices with key success matrix, right? And key metrics, healing rates are important, patient satisfaction, like Kahlianne is saying, is important, cost saving is very important. And as Mike alluded to, the importance of understanding the data and matching that data with the foundation of our EMR is key. 

So we would really like to thank Net Health as our sponsor this week for another excellent Wound Care Wednesday. You know, we really want to focus on understanding how this survey is important for us moving forward. So I'll give a brief, you know, 30 second outro for Mike and Kahlianne. We appreciate them joining us on this Wound Care Wednesday. Guys, real quick, the last question we always like to ask on the podcast: What makes you passionate about wound care? Kahlianne?  

Kahlianne Jones: Yeah, it's, for me, it's really the patients and the outcomes that you can see. Wound care is so dear to me from that perspective, and it's really rewarding to get to see the small part that software has in that outcome. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Awesome. Mike, same question, buddy. 

Mike Furr: Yeah, I would say 2 things. One, same as what Kahlianne was saying, the patients and really bringing quality of life back for the patients. And two, I feel like there's so much opportunity in the space of wound care to make a huge impact and bring technology in to make an impact specifically on the quality of care and then ultimately the outcomes for the patient and how they're living their lives. So again, it hits every care setting, and it impacts patients across their entire life. So just bringing some of these things in, hopefully it can help a little bit. 

Dr Jonathan Johnson: Awesome, agreed. And listen, we'd like to thank both of you again for joining us on this Wound Care Wednesday podcast. Remember, focus on looking at the study. I implore all my colleagues, everyone in the field, because it will give you steps to really focus on clinically, operationally, from a management standpoint, from even an investment standpoint, moving forward. Because without the data in the past, we cannot move forward in a progressive manner. 

So, we'd like to thank everyone for joining us on this Wound Care Wednesday podcast. I'm Dr Jonathan Johnson, also known as Dr Wounds, and we will see you on the next Wound Care Wednesday.