Photos of wounds are absolutely important in documenting the wound. It is best practice in wound care, medico legal and for compliance. There are certain insurers that require the photo measurement to include the ruler for example. Lack of photos can be a source of denial.


Having said that there are a number options. In all cases the process needs to be hippa compliant.
There are a few FDA approved devices that will take the photo of the wound and consistently measure the wound length , width and depth in the same orientation. So not only photo but take measurements. Also look at the photo to be uploaded into your eMR via wireless.

Alternatively, you can take a digital image, then have to have nurse/ tech download ( not recommended) Time consuming (hrs per week). Human error saved to wrong patient and not really hippa compliant as you will typically have all of the pts on the one SD card for a given day. In one of our busy wound centers using a digital camera added an additional 4 to 5 hrs a week to upload photos off an SD card.


In the interest of transparency, I work with a wound care specific EHR company that has a photo app, I would ask others to recommend a specific hardware /software product

Thank you. Yes I would appreciate additional input regarding the name of a camera that people have been happy with. We can not afford a designated wound care emr system and therefore has made our own templates for Meditech. The uploading of images sounds like a very nice approach.
Thank you.