Wound Image Program...How it works.

The purpose of the Wound Image Program (WIP) is to bring photographs of wounds (or other visible health problems) to a computer screen in front of a skilled nurse. She can compare them to earlier pictures of the same wound and can have a phone or email discussion with the person caring for the wound giving advice and encouraging words. It is hoped that this will heal wounds faster and catch complications and infections before they become serious.

The WIP is designed to work in many different health care environments
• Hospital post Surgical discharge
• Doctor's clinic as a triage system
• Specialist at an Ostomy Supplies Company customer service line
• Specialist at an advanced wound dressings company
• Nurse at a Long Term Care Home for the aged, concerned with Pressure Ulcers
• Visiting Nurse trying to reduce the frequency of visits for post op or home care
• Visiting health workers in low-resource areas. To improve skills and to improve care too.

The Wound Image Program (WIP) is designed to be easy to use and intuitive. The WIP can use pictures from any camera (that produces jpeg or jpg pictures) of any size.

The Wound Image Program aims to be robust, using email wherever possible. Txt messages or web uploads or a special app for Android Phones make it possible to use the tools the carers already know.

WIP stores the incoming images (and voice messages and text notes) in a folder for each patient. The Wound Care Nurse can look at them, enlarge them, send them as emails to colleagues for additional advice, look at earlier pictures. She can delete a picture or delete a whole patient's file.

The incoming pictures are stored in the Internet 'cloud'. When the wound care nurse uses the 'download images' menu item, all the pictures etc for her clinic are brought from the cloud and stored on her computer. They are deleted from the cloud.

When the downloading stops, it can take a few minutes if there are a lot of pictures, the first patient with a new picture is on the screen. Deal with him and press Next button, and she will see the pictures for the next patient, and so on until you are back the start.

If you click an object on the screen, something sensible and expected will happen. If you don't think so let us know and we will make it better! For example: click on one of the little 'thumbnail' pictures and it enlarges. Click on an interesting place on a large image and you see a close-up of that part.