Callum is currently Senior Product Manager at Bruin Biometrics LLC who manufacture the Provizio SEM Scanner and the accompanying Gateway Dashboard. Callum has 10 years of product management and marketing experience in the field of medical devices with expertise in digital marketing.

Poster Presentation (Research category) at The Society of Tissue Viability 2023 Conference

The Utility of Intelligent Digital Dashboards in Evaluating the Impact of Sub-Epidermal Moisture (SEM) Assessments on Clinical Decision to Improve Service Delivery in PU Prevention

Abstract

Background – Implementing SEM assessment technology is being recognised as routine practice in pressure ulcer (PU) prevention. Clinical data and real-world evidence support the implementation of SEM assessments to achieve consistent PU incidence reductions in multiple care settings.1,2 Clinical workflows integrated with SEM assessments are skin-tone agnostic and inform healthcare practitioners (HCPs) with early, actionable data to direct anatomy specific interventions to at-risk patients before skin-redness occurs which is even more important in dark skin tone patients and residents.

The aim was to develop an analytical, digital dashboard tool to capture patient and facility-level SEM assessment data to provide data driven support to HCPs to enable objective clinical decision-making and to provide patient-centered anatomy-specific PU prevention care practices.

Methods – A web-based dashboard was designed to be implemented within facility servers to wirelessly transfer encrypted data and allow HCPs to visualize patient-level SEM assessment data with the goal of improving service delivery. Visualization features were designed to track patient SEM-delta data throughout the episode of care from admission to discharge. Features at the facility level complemented SEM data with metrics on active users, devices, wards, and total patients scanned by day, week, month, or year.

Results – Dashboard analytics illustrate a day-by-day depiction of SEM assessments for individual patients demonstrating the impact SEM-data had on clinical decision-making and subsequent preventative interventions. Interventions directly correlated to the reduction in SEM value where a SEM-∆ ≥0.6 objectively alerts HCPs to increased risk of developing PUs on specific anatomical areas of a patient’s body. Ward-level analytics allowed monitoring of patients at-risk of developing PUs at the sacrum and heels on a daily and weekly basis. Multiple facilities achieved a 100% reduction in PU incidence.

Conclusions – Digital health dashboards allow real-time monitoring of patient-specific SEM-data and the impact of subsequent interventions. Monitoring SEM assessment data has the potential to support implementation of personalized PU care pathways with actionable clinical decisions. Facility-level insights will ensure health systems are better informed for “never event” investigations, delivering high-quality PU prevention care and realizing consistent PU incidence reductions whilst modernizing the PU prevention care pathway.

References

1. Ousey, K., Stephenson, J. & Blackburn, J. 2022. Sub-epidermal moisture assessment as an adjunct to visual assessment in the reduction of pressure ulcer incidence. Journal of Wound Care, 31, 208-216.
2. Musa L, Ore N, Raine G, Smith G. Clinical impact of a sub-epidermal moisture scanner: what is the real-world use? J Wound Care. 2021 Mar 2;30(3):198-208. doi: 10.12968/jowc.2021.30.3.198. PMID: 33729842.

*SEM Assessment technology – Provizio® SEM Scanner Bruin Biometrics LLC