16 July, 2025
Advanced wound measurement and assessment solution supporting better decisions and patient outcomes.
With Silhouette, Health New Zealand Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley, and Wairarapa Community Health Service teams are able to efficiently capture accurate wound information enabling better informed decisions. This has resulted in improved healing outcomes, engaged patients and reduced costs.
Long history with Silhouette 
The Capital and Coast Health Service was a nurse led service with a long history of care in the lower part of the North Island of New Zealand. It employed over 90 district nurses providing a range of care in the community setting with wound care making up approximately 70% of their referrals. In 2015 the Wound Care Team saw a need to implement a mobile, clinically reliable, robust wound measuring system that would enable them to accurately track wound healing and reduce the amount of hard to heal wounds. Community Wound Clinical Nurse Specialist, Claire Todd explains “The key has always been about measuring and seeing wound reduction so that we can know that we are on the right trajectory, for healing and to see people well and returning back to life without a wound – my goal in life!”
Following on from a successful trial of ARANZ Medical’s Silhouette 3D data and imaging system, the usage was expanded from an initial three systems connected to laptops to 30 iPads with the ability to capture images. The team has now widely adopted the use of the Silhouette on Mobile Devices which has meant all district nurses have access to Silhouette Mobile. Claire reports that “The system is popular with the team and the phones get pretty much 100% usage now with all the wound assessments done with Silhouette”
Adoption of the technology
The district nurses have a wide range of roles, and they are spread thinly. So any system needs to be efficient and simple to use. The Silhouette platform was configured in response to the community health service team input, helping gain trust and support. The district nurses can accurately measure from week to week if a wound is making progress to healing and take timely action if it’s not, helping them achieve better patient outcomes. “When you have staff enthusiastic about measuring and seeing the difference, you have a system that works.”
The nurses are not the only ones seeing the benefit the technology. Patient well-being and participation in the journey makes a huge difference and Silhouette allows us to do that, we can share the data, show them the pictures, and show them the graphs of reduction in size. According to Te Whare Tapa Whā, a holistic model of health, all aspects of our lives are interconnected and impact on our wellbeing. We know that education can be given to help with health literacy and participation. It is a shared journey that can cover many weeks or even years to healing.
Digital wound measurement and assessment benefits spreading
The application of the Silhouette platform is now expanding with the Hutt and the Wairarapa community teams adopting the phone technology, as well as wards and podiatry. The nurses in these teams no longer must wait for Doctor’s or Consultants to see the wound. Silhouette captures quality image and measurements, and tracks progress of the patient whether they are in the ward or in community care. Specialists can access images and notes at any time to make timely diagnosis and treatment plans. This is particularly important for the high-risk multi-disciplinary team meetings where community patients from across the district are discussed, being able to see the journey of wound changes benefits patient care.
Wound products are a huge cost to the health system, health providers need quality information to not only maximize healing but also to be able to audit cost and time to heal. Accurate measurement and tracking of wounds enable better informed decisions with more timely, targeted escalation and intervention when required. Resulting in tracked and faster healing – the outcome the team all want for the patient and the health system.
