Telemedicine in Wound Healing

Dear Editors

In the recent issue of the International Wound Journal, Jones et al. provided an excellent introduction to the area of Telemedicine in the clinical field of wound care (1). This is a rapidly developing area worthy of further papers covering the many new developments available to clinicians. As the President and CEO of MED‐e‐GATE Corporation, a company specialising in the area of bringing rapidly emerging e‐technology to the clinical area, I am fully aware of the ability of telemedicine to improve the lives of caregivers and patients alike but also the significant potential of such an approach to provide much needed evidence‐based outcomes.

We are creating a new paradigm in the way patients are evaluated and treated using state‐of‐the‐art imaging technology, the Internet and Web services. We are a focused group of individuals with a high knowledge of e‐health business development, chronic disease management, health economics, telehealth, public health and computer and imaging technology. MED‐e‐GATE is headquartered in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA.

MED‐e‐GATE Corporation has created a new e‐health system called Mederi‐Nexus^™ (Latin terms meaning ‘Healing Link’) for wound management and health economic research that is secure, reliable, easy‐to‐use and affordable. It is designed by a health economist and worldwide leaders in wound management, health care research and information technology to facilitate the (a) creation of a patient multimedia medical record (digital video, wound and patient information) by professional caregivers at the point‐of‐care; (b) secure transmission of related patient data and digital videos over the Internet to a virtual data laboratory; (c) global access to the patient's multimedia medical record by distant wound care consultants having appropriate user identification and password; (d) virtual assessment of patients and their wounds with high resolution videos, high performance audio and patient report cards on a user – friendly interface; and (e) secure communications between medical consultants, health economists and the point‐of‐care without the constraints of resources, time and place.

Mederi‐Nexus^™ is an innovative technology platform that nurses, allied health care professionals and health care organisations can use on a less grandiose scale and in a more manageable way to cut costs, increase access to specialised care, and evaluate their real‐world patient and wound outcomes for medical and business decision‐making. The primary objective in designing the Mederi‐Nexus^™ platform was to simulate as much as possible the real‐life experience of evaluating the patient, the disease and surrounding environment without considerable cost to the health care providers and protecting the privacy and confidentiality of the patient. Further, Mederi‐Nexus^™ could serve as an informatics gateway for specialists and providers to communicate with each other and have access to preferred, standardised tools for wound management and health economic assessment.

A number of pilot sites, both in the USA and Canada, are currently evaluating the system and we would be happy to submit a paper covering our findings in due course.