Sloan Water Technology (SWT) has asked patients about their lived experience, so that the scientists and engineers designing the wound healing invention can better understand their roles, and the people they are trying to help.
Although our technology will be applicable to a wide range of wounds, the first wound type it will be tested on (in 2025) is Venous Leg Ulcers (VLUs).
Anonymized comments from patients undergoing the NHS current state-of-the-art wound treatment regime for VLUs (typically 2-3 painful visits per week) are shown below:
- “There was so much fluid coming out of my foot, And it smelled really bad, like meat juice and it seeped through everything.”
- “I really don’t want to end up there again. I don’t want it back if I am ever able to get rid of this.”
- “I notice that my legs are swollen, and it hurts so much. My skin doesn’t feel good, and I know it’s a strain on the skin.”
- “Every other Thursday, I go to the grocery store in town in the morning, and that is all I do in my life now, life is not that eventful anymore.”
- “As I see it, I’m really, really dilapidated.”
At SWT, we believe that we have the privileged opportunity to change people's lives. We have what we believe is a life changing technology that will make of these quotes a notation in history rather than a life sentence. We passionately want to help patients.
On top of these human costs, the financial cost of wound management to the UK NHS is £8.3 Billion annually. Of this, VLUs take up a £1.8 Billion share.
Current healing rates for venous leg ulcers are low, less than 45%. Clinical records show some VLUS lasting 17 years. This leads us to a number of conclusions:
- The existence of a significant number of non-healing wounds, despite state-of-the-art treatments, proves we need a new approach, such as SWT’s device provides.
- This is the beginning - SWT’s device is suitable for future branching into many wound types, extra scenarios (e.g. community nursing) and many platforms (e.g. ambulances).
- We passionately believe this a problem worth solving.