A surgical site infection (SSI) surveillance project collaboration at Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals, King’s College Hospital and Evelina London Children’s Hospital has been honoured by the Journal of Wound Care Awards in Abu Dhabi.
The ISLA project won the Innovation in Surgical Site Infection award at the ceremony, held this week as part of the World Union of Wound Healing Societies (WUWHS) Congress.
Funded by the King's Health Partners Cardiovascular and Respiratory Partnership programme, the project delivers a new approach to post-operative wound management and surgical site infection surveillance, saving clinical time and patients’ travel time.
The project is a partnership between clinical teams and Islacare, a health technology start-up that has developed the world’s first visual medical record. On being discharged from hospital, patients now receive a colour photograph of their surgical wound and bespoke wound care information.
Patients use the Islacare platform to submit images of their surgical site and a wound assessment form at various points in the crucial 30 days following discharge.
Frontline champions across adult and children’s services at the five hospital sites have implemented the ISLA project for the photo at discharge scheme and a remote wound monitoring programme.
Clinicians and patients or carers have added almost 9000 submissions to ISLA to date. Of those submissions, approximately 9% offered an opportunity for early intervention or treatment, which is in line with the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme’s recommendations for multidisciplinary teams to actively monitor surgical wounds to reduce the risk of more severe infections developing.
Melissa Rochon, quality and safety lead for surveillance at Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals, said: “We are early on in our work to use wound images post-discharge. However, it is exciting to see how valuable this is already to our patients and the care we provide, and we are delighted to receive this award. 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.”
One patient commented: “The ISLA system, I believe, was crucial in enabling my wound to be looked at along with a variety of questions that the system prompted.”
Another patient said: “We found the ISLA service easy to use, and it was reassuring to know that we could have problems examined quickly and receive a rapid response to the uploaded information.” This award is the project’s third after receiving the Best Health Tech Project (Harefield, Thoracic) and Best New Tech (multi-centre) at the Digital Health Tech Awards in 2021.