Christchurch, New Zealand, October 11, 2007
ARANZ Medical Limited, an innovator in wound assessment technology, today announced that its SilhouetteMobile™ solution for wound imaging, measurement and documentation has won the Innovation Award at the New Zealand Health Innovation Awards 2007.
The New Zealand Health Innovation Awards are a joint initiative by the Ministry of Health and the Accident Compensation Commission of New Zealand. The Awards were started to recognize individuals and organizations that developed new and innovative approaches to delivering better health services. This year the Health Innovation Awards had almost 190 entries, with approximately 12% being selected as finalists.
The Health Innovation Awards celebrate innovation of New Zealand’s health professionals and showcase some of the excellent developments and improvements within our health service,
said Ministry of Health spokesman Dr Colin Feek.
New Zealand is showing it is at the cutting edge when it comes to progressive thinking and the development of ideas. We’ve seen previous winners attract international acclaim.
SilhouetteMobile is an innovative device that is dramatically improving the ease and accuracy with which wounds are measured,
says Dr Mark Nixon, Chief Medical Officer at ARANZ Medical Limited.
More than 2 years ago, in discussions with nurses and doctors involved in wound care, it became clear to us that a technology based solution could be developed which would be more accurate, more efficient, and more integrated with electronic medical records than the current state of the art systems. Working with wound care professionals we have developed SilhouetteMobile, an innovative portable computer device with custom camera and software, that allows a medical professional to easily capture and analyse information about a wound at the point of care. Information captured includes photographic images, quantitative measures and other user-entered wound assessment data, all obtained with no patient contact.
We have found SilhouetteMobile to be simple to use, easy to transport and to provide an accurate record of wound depth and surface area,
reports Catherine Hammond, Clinical Nurse Specialist and Educator at Nurse Maude Association in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The report generated by the system allows the clinician to review progress over time, alerting them to changes that may need further investigation. SilhouetteMobile is very useful as part of clinical audit and for research.
The winners of the Health Innovation Awards were announced at a gala dinner on 10 October 2007 at the Wellington Town Hall, Wellington, New Zealand.
Further information about the New Zealand Health Innovation Awards is available at http://www.healthinnovationawards.co.nz