MICA: Monitoring wound status using multi-parameter optical fibre sensors

最近对伤口健康经济负担的分析强调，2012/2013年，NHS处理了约220万处伤口，每年需要1860万名执业护士、1090万名社区护士、770万名全科医生和340万名医院门诊病人。NHS每年用于治疗这些伤口的费用为45 - 51亿英镑（约占整个NHS预算的4%）。我们建议开发一种包含廉价光纤传感器（OFS）的伤口敷料，它将监测伤口是否愈合、愈合是否进展以及伤口是否感染。我们的团队已在实验室测试中开发并验证了所建议的传感器，从而大大降低了项目风险。这种新敷料可能会对NHS的成本和病人护理产生重大影响。它将使临床干预迅速发生，但只有在需要的时候，从而改善伤口护理和减少NHS预约的数量。研究将包括基于临床的评估，然后是基于社区的慢性伤口患者研究。设计、管理、统计和卫生经济学专业知识将有助于支持开发一种有价值的、安全的、为患者和临床医生所接受的工具。

A recent analysis of the health economic burden of wounds highlighted that ~2.2 million wounds were managed by the NHS in 2012/2013 requiring annually 18.6 million practice nurse, 10.9 million community nurse, 7.7 million GP and 3.4 million hospital outpatient visits. The annual NHS cost of managing these wounds is £4.5-5.1 billion (~4% of the entire NHS budget).We propose to develop a wound dressing incorporating inexpensive optical fibre sensors (OFS) which will monitor whether a wound is healing, whether healing is not progressing and whether a wound is infected. The proposed sensors have been developed and validated by our team in laboratory tests thus greatly reducing project risk. The new dressing could have a significant impact on NHS costs and patient care. It will enable clinical interventions to take place promptly but only when required, thus improving wound care and reducing the number of NHS appointments. Studies will involve clinic based evaluation followed by a community based study of patients with chronic wounds. Design, regulatory, statistics and health economics expertise will help to support development of a valuable, safe tool that is acceptable to patients and clinicians.