Intelligence and integration of care for smarter chronic wounds management (ICAREWOUNDS): Patient-Centric Digital Innovation for Chronic Wound Management

Background: In Europe, an estimated 1.5–2 million individuals live with chronic wounds (CW), with cases rising sharply alongside an ageing population¹. These wounds not only reduce patients’ life quality but also place substantial strain on healthcare systems. CW represent a major global healthcare challenge, which ICAREWOUNDS project aims to address through an innovative integrated care (IC) approach that combines clinical expertise, digital technology, and patient-centred care to enhance efficiency across healthcare systems.

 

Approach: ICAREWOUNDS project, funded by European Commission, adopts a co-design approach to develop and validate an innovative, patient-centric digital platform for management of CW. This platform will use trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to analyse wound photographs to support clinical decision making. Prototype will be pilot-tested for usability and feasibility by multidisciplinary healthcare professionals across Ireland, Spain, and Poland, ensuring platform’s adaptability within diverse healthcare ecosystems.

 

Using a co-design methodology, clinical and research experts, patients and caregivers across three countries were bought together to develop an IC model that aligns the real-world clinical workflows. Ireland led IC model’s development, which informed digital platform’s design. Stakeholder mapping and co-design workshops were conducted across three-regions to identify the main challenges in CW management. Participants comprised clinicians, patients, patient support groups and policymakers.

ICAREWOUNDS is now entering a three-phase, 11-month pilot evaluation. Phase 1, starting in November 2025 aimed at identifying initial usability issues and exploring user needs through structured expert feedback from clinicians, thereby informing iterative design refinements. Phase 2 (5 months) concentrated on concept validation evaluating feasibility, validity, acceptability, and perceived clinical value using validated assessment tools. Phase 3 (2 months) will examine platform’s usability to explore participants interactions with platform, focusing on user-friendliness, cognitive load, and overall experience through validated instruments and focus group.

 

Results: Co-Design workshops with multidisciplinary stakeholders across three-regions highlighted critical challenges in CW management. Key barriers included poor information flow across healthcare settings, gap in patient-professional communication, and inadequate inter-professional coordination. Across all countries, participants emphasized the importance of a patient-focused IC model to standardise treatment, reduce care fragmentation, and enable timely interventions, thereby improving patient outcomes.

 

In Ireland, additional challenges included high staff turnover in acute hospitals and insufficient tissue viability training in nursing curriculum, intensified by limited community-based tissue viability services. Country-level digital readiness varied, with Ireland showing high readiness for change due to supportive initiatives such as Sláintecare, Spain demonstrating regional electronic health record successes but lacking full national integration, and Poland exhibiting low digital readiness, hindered by limited political and public engagement.

 

Implications: ICW outcomes will demonstrate how digital innovation, when co-designed with healthcare professionals across diverse systems, can advance IC for chronic conditions globally. In addition, digitally supported, patient-centric IC models can improve CW management by reducing care fragmentation, improving usability for clinicians, supporting timely clinical decisions and enhancing trust in technology. New learning from ICW is transferrable to CW management in other long-term conditions, such as malignancy-related ulcers, chronic infectious ulcers highlighting how IC can strengthen multidisciplinary collaboration and drive efficiency across diverse healthcare settings.