Wound Innovations Officially Launched
Wound CRC are delighted to announce the official opening of Wound Innovations, the CRC’s breakthrough service to combat chronic wounds on a national level. Dr Charlie Day from Innovation and Science Australia officially oversaw the opening in a media event Tuesday.
Chronic wounds cost the Australian health system over $3billion a year. Combined with an ageing population, patients are suffering in silence for years, even decades, with this costly chronic health problem leading to many avoidable amputations.
The new service, Wound Innovations, is a key activity of the Cooperative Research Centres Programme, one of the most significant Government Programmes that enable industry-led research to be translated into real world settings.
CEO Dr Ian Griffiths today said:
“Today marks a new chapter in the history of the CRC Programme. Through the increased support of the Australian Government’s Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, we have been able to develop an innovative new health service dedicated to wound care with a focus on clinical best-practice, education and research. It will improve access to specialist care for patients with wounds across the country by providing an ambulatory clinic, national telehealth and wound advisory service. It will keep patients out of hospital and enable advanced wound treatments to be more accessible.
The research from the CRC shows that for a patient to be successfully treated, a multi-disciplinary team approach is required – no one health professional can treat a chronic wound. What we have at the moment is patients navigating a complicated system or abandoning the system altogether until it is too late to avoid an amputation.
The new service solves the problem in two ways. Firstly, there is one site where the patient attends and the entire clinical specialist team is involved from start to finish. Secondly, the latest innovations in research-based treatment are utilised. This service will see a dramatic reduction in costs to the health system.”
Dr Griffiths explains further;
“It takes time for innovations to be brought to the market, especially in the health domain. Health professionals will not embrace innovation unless there is an evidence-base defined by robust research. We have delivered that. Successive governments have shown a bi-partisan approach to growing innovation in Australia – enabling the research to be translated into services available to the public”.
The first clinic has opened in Brisbane and offers telehealth and wound advisory service for patients Australia wide. It also embodies a School of Excellence for training a clinical workforce in improved wound care.
For full eligibility criteria, referral information, details about the services available and further information: