Slow healing wounds, particularly diabetic feet, can take
between 6 to 24 months to heal. This causes a high burden for
individuals, families, clinicians, and the economy at large due to
extended sick leave. There are over 1M diabetic feet patients
per year in the Netherlands and Germany, 4M in the EU and
6,7M in the US. Diabetes is projected to increase in the coming
years, particularly in the West. Diabetic patients have high
chance to develop ulcers (up to 39%), which 10-15% won’t
heal and out of which 25% will need amputation. Established
treatment in the clinic is the “wait and see” approach,
consisting in frequent change of bandages and the use of
antibiotics to prevent infection. This consumes a lot of nursing
time and hospital space use, and overuses antibiotics.
Micromechanical pressure waves stimulate wound healing, even
in ulcerations. We are developing a patch that administers
controlled pressure waves for wound healing therapeutics. In
this voucher we want to increase our interaction with the 4TU
federation and the participating University Medical Centers. We
will identify synergistic organizations to evaluate collaboration
and learn from their journeys.