Artificial intelligence could soon be used to treat chronic wounds and people need to embrace the idea, one of the world's leading burns specialist says.
Professor Fiona Wood, who is globally renowned for her reconstructive and plastic surgery work as well as burns research, said the technology would be able to play a leading role in helping treat skin conditions and wounds in coming years.
The comments were made during a speech at the National Press Club where she urged for the free treatment to be expanded for chronic wound patients.
Prof Wood, who was awarded Australian of the Year in 2005 for her pioneering work on spray-on skin for burns victims after the 2002 Bali bombings, said AI could be a flagship technology for wound care.
"Starting to use artificial intelligence in that space - to get the right dressing, the right person, the right time - is absolutely right in the wheelhouse of this kind of technology," she said on Tuesday.
"The opportunity to use artificial intelligence in this way is absolutely something we should engage in."
The burns specialist told the National Press Club that free wound care needed to be expanded for people at high risk of chronic wounds.
Chronic wounds are skin injuries which heal slowly or not at all following a medical condition or injury and can lead to more serious conditions such as sepsis.
While chronic wounds are estimated to affect 450,000 people each year, Prof Wood said the real figure was likely much higher.
"The pain associated with some of these chronic wounds is debilitating and crippling, and we're talking months and into years on occasions," she said.
"As we get older, the bigger number of (skin tears) become a chronic wound, requiring much more involved therapies in order to heal them. So the smart money is on stopping it in the first place."
It is estimated each patient with a chronic wound spends more than $4000 on out-of-pocket expenses, costing the health and aged-care budget more than $6.6 billion.
The address coincided with Wound Awareness Week, with Prof Wood calling for a boost in wound awareness education and an increase in medical research for treatment.
She said while injuries to other parts of the body were often treated straight away, many people ignored skin wounds which could lead to conditions becoming exacerbated.
"Even before the injury, there is opportunity to change that trajectory with prevention, with education into our communities, with education to our pre-hospital space and our primary health space," she said.
