An innovative new technology that helps doctors and nurses to make faster treatment decisions for people with burn wounds is now being used in Manchester.
Until now healthcare professionals have had to rely on making subjective assessments based on their experience to determine if wounds – such as burns injuries – will respond to treatment.
But Spectral MD’s DeepView™ imaging system uses artificial intelligence to give clinicians a healing assessment on day-one of the burn wound injury to help them make the best decision about treatment for patients.
It was launched at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester last week having already been deployed at hospitals in Swansea, Newcastle, Essex, and Aylesbury earlier in the year.
Spectral MD’s clinical affairs manager, Lisa Wood, is a tissue viability nurse who has cared for people with wounds and is passionate about wound care innovation. She has helped to launch DeepView™ in the UK hospitals.
She said: “One of the brilliant things about DeepView™ is you can use it on day-one. You don’t need to wait for the burn to evolve for it to give you a healing prediction. This technology looks forward in time to know will the tissue heal and provides that information straight away.”
Consultant burns, plastic and reconstructive surgeon Zeeshan Sheikh, of Manchester Foundation NHS Trust, said: “We tend to use clinical judgement to assess burn wound depth and from that assess whether a patient would have a better outcome with or without surgery.
“Although technology is available which helps assessment in this area, the same technology has been around for over 20 years. With the advent of artificial intelligence, this has allowed some added benefits, which I’m hoping to see DeepView™ provide.
“With the recent delivery of the DeepView™ machine to our Burns Unit at Wythenshawe Hospital, we are one of only five centres currently evaluating this technology in the UK.
“We hope the outcome of the trial will aid in speedy accurate burn depth evaluation and ultimately better decision making in the care of burn patients with better outcomes in terms of scarring, shorter hospital stays and reduced financial costs for the NHS.”
The first site to start using DeepView™ in the UK was the Northern Regional Burn Centre in Newcastle.
Consultant Burn Surgeon Chris Lewis said: “The DeepView™ technology provides us with high quality photos and gives us a binary output in terms of whether we need to surgically remove an area of burned skin or whether it will heal. It makes the decision making about whether patients need surgery a lot easier.
“We can take it into patients’ rooms, operating theatres and all around the hospital and that’s a gamechanger. Rather than having to take the patient to the device, the device moves to them.”
