Diagnostics have been the focus of several of our editorials in the past 1, 2. This is an area of wound care that is urgently required to help with the drive to clinical specialization. Better diagnostic tools will provide efficiencies in our delivery of wound care practice and provide better outcomes for patients.
As previously discussed 2 one of the most significant issue for the development of these diagnostic approaches is that they are often driven by smaller start‐up organisations that unfortunately do not have the resources to drive the development of wound diagnostics in an aggressive manner. One of the suggested solutions was the partnering of multiple organisation to leverage their development or clinical support resources to more efficiently enter the market, while providing the clinical data necessary to encourage adoption.
To help drive this efficiency, an International Wound Diagnostics Community has been launched. It allows like minds to connect and share and discuss all information regarding wound diagnostics. So if you are a researcher, clinician or commercial organisation with an interest please visit the community (www.wounddiagnsoticscommunity.com) and participate to drive the growth of this very important component of our clinical specialization.
As the editorial team of the IWJ, also members of this community, we encourage participation, as we need to see a more rapid development and commercialization of diagnostic tools in this area. Within the community participants can share information/research both publically and privately helping advance understanding in this critical component of care.
Researchers and commercialization organisations can leverage both their resource and finances to help accelerate development and clinical validation. By sharing combined experience the whole development process can be shortened and therefore the time to market (i.e. in the hands of users) will be much quicker. Wound diagnostics have been a long time coming but are a significant requirement to advance the treatment of patients with wounds. A community resource, connecting those of like minds will be a valuable resource in the evolution of an important area of wound care clinical specialization.
References
- 1. Harding K, Queen D. Can 2015 be a transformative year for diagnostics in wound care? Int Wound J 2015;12:1. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2. Wound Diagnostics' Arrive at Last. Int Wound J 2010;7:207–209. [Google Scholar]