Swift Medical is the world leader in digital wound care. Based in Toronto, its wound care management technology is used by over 4,000 healthcare organizations across the continuum of care to improve the prevention, treatment, and management of wounds.
The Problem
More than 6.5 million people in North America have chronic wounds that require ongoing care. Nearly half of all healthcare in Canada involves patients with wounds. The majority of these patients heal at home. Many live in remote areas, where consultations and treatment are hard to obtain. Others have a range of reasons why they cannot access prompt treatments for stubborn wounds that refuse to heal—the elderly woman who does not have reliable transportation or the vulnerable man experiencing homelessness are just two examples.
Factors such as these make it difficult to provide high-quality wound care and result in more than 40 per cent of wounds being treated improperly. Without regular care, patients can face infections that lead to hospitalization, amputation and even death.
The Telewound Care Solution
The Digital Supercluster member community came together to address the wound care issue by developing a technology solution to accelerate a remote model for wound care.
Telewound Care Canada is being lead by Swift Medical in partnership with SE Health, AlayaCare, Central East Local Health Integration Network, Michener Institute of Education at the University Health Network, and McGill University Health Centre. The advanced smartphone imaging platform enables patients to take 3D medical grade photographs of their wounds and share them with their healthcare providers. Doctors, nurses and patients then take part in virtual consultations, during which they view the images, evaluate healing and identify necessary treatments.
These high-resolution, scientifically calibrated images that have sub-millimeter accuracy are an absolutely essential requirement for remote healthcare professionals to monitor and assess wounds accurately and recommend the best treatment regimes. The Telewound Care Canada solution also makes it possible to quantify and forecast the risk of new or worsening wounds, so that healthcare providers can recommend the personalized care necessary to speed up patient recovery.
“The Telewound Care Canada project is making wound care accessible to patients across the country by building tools that transform healthcare and improve patient’s lives,” says Carlo Perez, CEO and Co-Founder of Swift Medical. “Our digital application is empowering patients to take medical-grade wound images from home. This enables them to receive better quality care, while also managing risk, cost and compliance.”
Measurable Results
The Digital Supercluster helped Swift to accelerate the development and commercialization of software by solidifying long-term partnerships with Fortune 50 companies and national health systems as strategic customers. Two new products were created, along with 8 new IP assets.
“Working with the Digital Technology Supercluster has greatly accelerated the pace of innovation at Swift Medical, deepening our IP strategy and assets. This has sharpened our competitive edge against global competitors, raised our profile in health technology, and allowed us to provide much more value to our healthcare customers — and ultimately their patients — with the technology we’ve developed and commercialized through the project.” – Justin Allport, Co-founder and Chief Engineer at Swift Medical
The results generated by Telewound Care Canada have been immediate and widespread, with over 25 healthcare provider organizations (i.e. hospitals, home health agencies, etc.) participating. The smartphone imaging platform is achieving success after deployment in three health jurisdictions in Ontario and Quebec — including remote First Nations communities in northern Quebec, where patients have a high prevalence of diabetes, which slows wound healing. Swift also reported export led growth in international markets such as the UK and Belgium.
Telewound Care Canada is delivering significant health system cost reductions — to be precise, a 69-percent decrease in supply costs and a 51-precent decrease in nursing costs associated with wound care. This reduction translates into $1,050 worth of savings per patient. Even better, these impressive savings do not take into account an anticipated drop in costs related to re-admission to hospital — which decreased by 7-percent.
Swift Medical has also used the success of Telewound Care Canada to raise $44 million in venture financing — funds the ambitious Canadian SME will use to create more digital devices and usher in a new era of clinical precision.
“The Supercluster has been instrumental in our ability to develop new innovative technologies, transform these technologies into novel IP and product offerings, and commercialize them at scale in Canada and internationally. As a direct result of our Supercluster project, almost 2,000 patients have been able to access digitally-enhanced wound care, which has led to meaningful outcomes, such as over $1,000 in health system cost savings per patient, a reduction in ED visits and readmissions, and an improvement in clinician and patient satisfaction when it comes to wound care.” – Carlo Perez, Founder and CEO of Swift Medical
