The long-term objectives of the proposed project include developing, validating and disseminating a reliable automated system for monitoring pressure sore status for nursing homes, hospitals and home health agencies. While pressure sores remain prevalent and costly, identification of more effective treatment and management strategies is hindered by the lack of a universal system for describing and monitoring actual pressure sore status. Pilot work has resulted in the development and validation of a reliable status evaluation and reporting system. However, the Pressure Sore Status Tool (PSST) currently only exists in paper form. Automation would not only allow for more efficient field utilization, but would also allow specific sub-analyses that would be impractical in a manual system and would ideally contribute to more effective treatment. Consequently, the Phase I project is directed toward establishing the field utility of the manual system; automating the PSST and expanding the software to allow sub-analyses; identifying necessary system modification for Phase II testing; and establishing the evaluation methodology and power requirements to address effectiveness and evaluation of the extent to which the system is universally usable. Phase II will focus on necessary system modifications, issues of efficiency and generalization and documentation of the system's effect on procedural utilization and patterns of regeneration. Phase III will focus on dissemination/ marketing the PSST to the nation's 25,000 nursing homes as well as other long term and acute care facilities and the possible establishment of a wide scale user data base [viz. registry]
