Becton Dickinson (BD) has announced a funding collaboration with Isla Care to further develop the Isla Visual Record for Surveillance.
The platform is used after surgery, enabling patients to monitor and share updates of their post-surgical wound healing, by submitting images and monitoring information to their clinician. This smartphone-connected solution allows clinicians to accurately monitor the development of surgical site infection (SSI), reducing unnecessary visits to hospital and lowering the risk of late identification of wound infection.
In the UK, it is estimated that one in 20 patients who undergo surgery contract an SSI. SSIs often occur post-surgery in the part of the body where the surgery was performed - they increase an individual’s risk of morbidity and mortality. Patients with an SSI are six times more likely to be readmitted to hospital. SSIs are estimated to cost the NHS £700 million a year.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put considerable pressure on hospital capacity and increased the backlog of people waiting for routine care. Alongside this, the events of the past two years have accelerated the use of digital health solutions, allowing clinicians and patients to monitor symptoms and conditions remotely.
The monitoring and continued assessment of post-surgical wounds is critical to the early management of infections and aiding recovery. Isla allows clinicians to monitor their patients’ wounds post-discharge via the submission of images and interactive assessment forms by patients. Its visual record and remote monitoring platform allows clinicians to easily and regularly assess patient healing, and to intervene at the earliest signs of infection or wound breakdown.
Simon Noble-Clarke, UK marketing leader for BD, said: “We are delighted to be collaborating with Isla Care and combining our expertise to create a ground-breaking tool that helps address a costly and time-consuming problem for the NHS and patients. Working with our collaborators to roll out these innovations underpins our commitment to tackling unmet needs, advancing the world of health, and improving patient safety.”
BD and Isla Care’s collaboration seeks to develop the existing Isla platform, creating a tool that employs artificial intelligence to analyse the images submitted to detect early signs of wound infection, flagging those patients who most urgently require review by a clinician. The Isla solution has already been rolled out in 16 NHS trusts across the UK.
Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals (RB&HH) are using Isla.
Melissa Rochon, quality and safety lead for surveillance at the hospitals said: “Although we are early on in our work to use wound images post-discharge, it is exciting to see how valuable this is already to our patients and the care we provide. We have a fantastic opportunity to reduce the risk of surgical site infection and improve wound healing rates using a proactive surgical wound surveillance strategy.”
Support from the Kings Health Partners Cardiovascular & Respiratory Partnership Programme has also enabled the use of Isla across KHP including King’s College Hospital and Evelina London Children’s Hospital.
Commenting on the collaboration, Peter Hansell, co-founder of Isla Care said: “We’re excited to be partnering with BD and RB&HH to take Isla to the next level, helping to increase staff capacity and patients to play a more active role in their wound care. Through this relationship, Isla, BD and RB&HH are paving the way for proactive remote surgical wound surveillance to become standard practice within healthcare.”
