A new app has been piloted in North East London to help district nurses document chronic wound management more efficiently.

The tech has been used in community services and stores a catalogue of photographs to accurately document chronic wounds

District nurses can use the app on a smartphone – making it lightweight, portable and easy to clean.

Using two calibration stickers placed either side of the wound, the app can scan it and capture its size and depth to build a 3D image.

Nurses can then fill out further characteristics on the software such as colour, pain level, location and smell to give a full picture of the wound’s development.

Kay Rumsey, nurse and operational lead for the project when the pilot began, told Nursing Times: “We’re never going to have enough nurses but what we need to do is get better technology and get better at the way we document. That’s why we wanted to [pilot] it, because we found we had clinicians spending a long time documenting and we wanted to give them more face-to-face time.”

Nurses can use the app to review previous images to monitor the wound’s progress and adjust treatment plans accordingly.

The app can be used on any wound but it could be especially useful for chronic wounds such as pressure ulcers.

There are 2.2 million adults affected by chronic wounds in the UK and it is estimated to be costing the government £5.3bn a year.

At the moment many district nurses rely on measuring wounds manually, usually with a paper ruler.

Using photographs “says a thousand words” and provides useful visual aids for patients, said Ms Rumsey.

“The patients quite like it because they can get a sequential photograph, to see if it’s improving or deteriorating," she said.

“You can really make the patient a part of their care in that sense, you’re really including them.

“You can give people sizes and say ‘it’s decreased by 0.2cm’ but once you show a person a photograph, it means a lot more to the patient.”

Ms Rumsey noted that there had been some challenges – filling out additional information has been time consuming for some of the nurses trialling the tech.

However, she believed investing in this kind of technology would benefit nursing practice because it was aiming for a “high standard of documentation.”

“We’re an evidenced based profession. We rely on district nurses being autonomous practitioners and having this kit with them gives them that evidenced base to look after patients," said Ms Rumsey.

The app is currently being used by Care City, a health education centre based in Barking, and Wokingham Medical Centre, a GP partnership. It has been developed by company Healthy.io.

Gill Cooper, clinical lead nurse at Wokingham Medical Centre, said: “Patients now feel confident that the progress of their wounds is being tracked with photographs, and they are also able to look at the photos and understand the progression or deterioration of their wound so that we can discuss treatment together.

“The biggest impact for us is having photographs of the wound. It has given us the chance to review wounds and to think about wound care before the patient even enters the room.”