A screenshot of the Remote wound monitoring app (left) and a sample produced by the 3D modelling system (right).
Chronic wounds take an average of six months to heal. Patients are usually discharged before the wounds heal, hence requiring the need for continuous wound monitoring. However, caregivers are often untrained and may not provide accurate information, hence Nucleus Dynamics Ptd Ltd came up with a better means of remote wound monitoring.
A mobile app was initially developed to allow medical personnel to assess wounds when they were not physically present with the patient at the time of injury or during post-treatment check-ups. Now, it has been modified to provide a software-as-a-service (SaaS) that reconstructs high-precision 3D models from videos captured by smartphones. This enables accurate colour calibration for automatic wound tissue classification.
First, this app keeps discomfort to patients to a minimum as compared to conventional methods of measurements, with the latter being more prone to human errors and subjectivity. There is a significant time reduction in wound measurement – on average, from 30 to 8 minutes. Additionally, it being a mobile app, this presents a low-cost solution for clinicians and caretakers. Finally, the use of 3D scanning and reconstruction technology can be easily replicated for use in other industries such as tourism, logistics and various industrial sectors.
The remote wound monitoring app was incubated by NTU Ventures Ptd Ltd. A $50,000 grant was given under the Interactive Digital Media Strategic Research Programme (IDM SRP), specifically the IDM Jump-start and Mentor (i.JAM) Reload Tier 1 funding initiative.
Nucleus Dynamics is a medical device start-up that works with patients, hospitals and doctors to help them manage chronic wounds more effectively, thus enabling more efficient use of hospital resources and doctors.
