Wound assessment and monitoring apparatus and method

• US 20040059199A1
• Filed: 09/04/2003
• Published: 03/25/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 09/04/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hill-Rom Services Incorporated (Baxter International Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Hill-Rom Services Incorporated (Baxter International Inc.)
• Inventors: Powell, Scott R., Upadhya, Peush, Thomas, Pamela Sue, Rincker, Miles D., Savage, John M., Pant, Nitin
• Application Number:
  US10/655,412
• Publication Number:
  US 20040059199A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/300
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/00 Measuring for diagnostic purposes radiation diagnosis A61B6/00; diagnosis by ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves A61B8/00; Identification of persons
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/445 Evaluating skin irritation or skin trauma, e.g. rash, eczema, wound, bed sore
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7275 Determining trends in physiological measurement data; Predicting development of a medical condition based on physiological measurements, e.g. determining a risk factor
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/20 for electronic clinical trials or questionnaires
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 15/00 ICT specially adapted for medical reports, e.g. generation or transmission thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/30 for calculating health indices; for individual health risk assessment

Abstract

A wound assessment and monitoring apparatus and method is provided for monitoring the development of wounds by patients of a health care facility. Surveys are conducted on patients of the health care facility to collect wound information, and wound assessments are performed.

Claims

1. A computer program product embodied in an computer readable medium, the computer program product comprising instructions that when executed cause a computing device to be operable as a device for monitoring the development of wounds by patients of a health care facility, the device operating to:

display a survey to be conducted on patients of the health care facility, the survey including at least one wound risk assessment selected from a plurality of possible wound risk assessments,

display information about a patient for whom the survey is to be conducted,

receive survey data for the patient periodically during the patient'"'"'s stay at the facility, and

display a risk score for each wound risk assessment in the survey based on the survey data for the patient.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the plurality of possible wound risk assessments includes Braden, Norton, Waterlow, and Hill-Rom risk assessments.

3. The computer program product of claim 2, wherein the plurality of possible wound risk assessments further includes a custom risk assessment for the facility.

4. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the computing device is a handheld device.

5. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the computing device further operates to display a plurality of available surveys from which a desired survey is may be selected.

6. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the computing device further operates to store the survey data in a memory.

7. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the survey is user-definable.

8. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the survey is pre-defined by the facility.

9. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the survey is configured to be conducted on patients that have a wound and on patients that do not have a wound.

10. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the survey is configured to track the development of wounds by patients who do not have wounds at the time they are admitted to the facility.

11. A method implemented on a computing device, for studying the development of wounds by patients of a facility, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving a plurality of first survey data for a first facility over a network, the first survey data including wound information and support surface information for patients of the first facility,

storing the first survey data in a memory, and

analyzing the first survey data to determine whether there is a relationship between the wound information and the support surface information.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the wound information includes an indication of whether patients have wounds.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the support surface information includes the name of a support surface.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising the step of communicating the results of the analyzing step to a person having a relationship with the facility.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the person is affiliated with a support surface manufacturer.

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising the steps of:

receiving a plurality of second survey data for a second facility over a network, the second survey data including wound information and support surface information for patients of the second facility, storing the second survey data in a memory, and comparing the second survey data to the first survey data.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the first and second survey data include assessment values, further comprising the step of averaging the assessment values of the first and second survey data.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein the first survey data includes support surface information for patients that do not have a wound.

19. The method of claim 11, wherein the analyzing step includes calculating a wound incidence percentage.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the support surface information includes an indicator of a support surface used by each patient, and the analyzing step includes determining a wound incidence percentage for each support surface in use.

21. The method of claim 11, wherein the wound information includes an indicator of wound stage, the support surface information includes an identifier for each support surface in use, and the analyzing step includes determining the number of wounds in each stage by support surface.

22. A computer program product embodied in a computer-readable medium, the computer program product comprising instructions that when executed cause a computing device to be operable as a device for monitoring the incidence of wounds in patients of a health care facility, the device operating to:

receive a plurality of wound information for a grouping of patients of the facility, the wound information including an indication of whether a patient has a wound,

compute a wound incidence percentage for the grouping of patients, and

communicate the wound incidence percentage to a person associated with the facility.

23. The computer program product of claim 22, wherein the wound incidence percentage is computed over a time period equal to the average patient stay.

24. The computer program product of claim 22, wherein the wound incidence percentage is computed for each patient for a time period beginning on an admission date and ending on a discharge date.

25. The computer program product of claim 22, wherein the computing device further operates to receive information about an activity level of the facility.

26. The computer program product of claim 25, wherein the computing device further operates to analyze the activity level information and the wound incidence percentage.

27. The computer program product of claim 25, wherein the computing device further operates to conduct an occurrence study.