EWMA Projects - New & Previous

Every year a number of focus areas and project initiatives are defined by the EWMA Council. These ideas and initiatives may be formulated and conducted in collaboration with the national cooperating organisations and international partner organisations of EWMA.

In this section you will find an overview of new as well as previous projects and focus areas of EWMA. These include development of focus documents as well as initiatives to create political awareness or collect data on specific aspects of wounds and wound management.

If you wish to propose EWMA focus topics or projects, please send a short description to jnk@ewma.org. We kindly ask you to follow the procedure outlined here.

For more information about these projects and activities, please use the links below

Lower Leg Ulcer Diagnosis & Treatment

Project period: 2022-2024

Significant challenges remain in Europe with regards to consistently offering patients with lower leg ulcers a fast and correct diagnosis, and thereby prevent lengthy treatment plans with little success and substantial patient suffering.

Too many patients are never offered the right treatment due to incorrect diagnosis and failure to see the right specialist. EWMA wishes to address this in a project with multiple deliverables addressing the current needs and challenges in leg ulcer diagnosis across Europe.

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New technologies for tissue replacement

Project period: 2020 - 2023

The project reviews and highlights the new technologies for surgical management of chronic wounds that made their way to the market. The primary deliverable will be an overview document targeting wound care specialists with an interest in new therapies, bridging the increasing demand for surgical solutions with the adequate indications in the complex field of wound management.

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Antimicrobial Stewardship

Project period: 2014–ongoing

EWMA is introducing a tailored stewardship concept to wound care practitioners. Aim of the stewardship programme is to reduce inappropriate use of antibiotics by promoting, facilitating and teaching the use of antibiotic alternatives in wound management across all healthcare settings.

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Cold Plasma – An emerging technology for clinical use in wound healing

Project period: 2023 – ongoing

Cold Atmospheric Plasma (CAP) potentially represents a new, sustainable, cost-effective advanced therapy. Therefore, it is a primary aim for the document to investigate the barriers for the uptake of CAP as a routine clinical therapy in wound healing and provide recommendations on how these barriers may be overcome in addition to contribute to the general awareness of CAP among clinicians and the development of safe and efficient solutions for the delivery of the therapy.

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Translational Research Group

Project period: 2022–ongoing

The main objecitves of this goup and project are: 

• to reinforce the position of EWMA as a wound healing community that brings together stakeholders involved in the development of wound care products
• promoting related education and translational research by acting as a discussion forum for innovation 
• to support the implementation of evidence based medicine and innovation in wound management
• to build a platform for networking and connecting people in wound management (researchers, producers- industry, consumers of products - healthcare workers and consumers of care – patients, citizens)

The group is planning to arrange a series of webinars on the topic of translational research. 

Impact of patients's health and lifestyle on wound healing

Project period: 2020–ongoing

The adoption of positive lifestyle factors and prevention of risk factors for chronic illness generally contributes to enhanced wound healing. However, at present no publication provides a synthesis of the impact of such factors on wound prevention and healing outcomes. The EWMA project aims therefore to provide a synthesis of current research on the impact of lifestyle factors and risk factors for chronic illness on wound healing and to create a comprehensive resource for health care professionals and patients on how to integrate different lifestyle factors into their wound management plan.

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Negative Pressure Wound Therapy

Project period: 2022-2023

NPWT and our knowledge about the efficacy of the treatment has evolved. In this new publication, EWMA will describe the available NPWT technologies and applications and provide hands-on clinical guidance on the use of NPWT. The new publication will include solutions such as reticulated open cell foam dressings with through holes with NPWT, as well as disposable NPWT and NPWT combined with compression.

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Holistic management of wound related pain

Project period: 2021 – on-going

This project aims to outline best practice on crucial elements in a successful management of wound pain, such as the holistic assessment of the patient in pain and its documentation, identification and evaluation of strategies that may reduce pain during wound care procedures, considerations concerning local factors that may cause wound related pain and selection of dressings that can contribute to pain alleviation. 

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EWMA Telemedicine Project

Project period: 2020 - on-going

In light of the increased need to be able to manage patients on distance, caused by the COVID-19 lockdowns, EWMA has decided to focus on supporting the implementation of telemedicine and telehealth services in wound management. 

The EWMA Telemedicine Project includes a number of activities, aiming to provide guidance and support knowledge sharing about telemedicine in wound management in Europe and across the world. 

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Compression Therapy

Project period: 2019–ongoing

EWMA is currently working on a project aiming to investigate the use of compression therapy (CT) in venous leg ulcers (VLU) across the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. The project aims to examine and create awareness about the current challenges related to suboptimal use of compression, as well as identify quality improvement interventions to address these challenges in different health care contexts and national settings, and develop a programme theory and driver diagram supporting implementation. 

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Palliative Wound Care

Project period: 2023 - ongoing

The project aims to provide a synthesis of the current evidence on management of core symptoms in palliative wounds. It will support health care professionals in their selection of the best strategies for management of palliative wounds and to enhance patient outcomes, research and education in this field.

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Skin Tear Prevention Campaign

Project period: 2021-2022

Since the inception of the International Skin Tear Advisory Panel (ISTAP) in 2011 there is an emerging body of evidence to support the prevention, assessment and management of skin tears.  Early recognition of people who are at risk of developing skin tears is an essential part of prevention and is vital to minimising incidence of avoidable skin tears.

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Living with Chronic Wounds

Project period: 2019–2020

With the Living With Chronic Wounds (LWCW) project EWMA aims to illustrate the experience of the wound patient in a number of recorded interviews with the patient, the health care professional(s) responsible for the treatment and care of the patient, as well as a representative of the health care institution. 

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Person-Centred Care - Patient Empowerment in Wound Management

Project period: 2019–2020

The primary objective of this project is to help wound care practitioners optimise the wound care process through patient-centred care.

The document will describe efficient patient communication strategies and provide recommendations on how to involve patients and their families in the treatment, asking relevant questions, etc.

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Birth-related Wounds

Project period: 2019–2020

The objective of this project is to develop resources targeting health care professionals who provide care to women who have undergone childbirth (vaginally or by caesarean section). The objective will be to enhance the wound management skills of these professionals, thereby supporting the prevention and treatment of birth-related wounds and post-caesarean section infections.

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Swedish Outcome Project

Project period: 2018–2020

A collaboration of RiksSår and the University Hospital of Malmö is looking to document the current state of play in terms of prevalence and perception of wounds in Sweden. The aim is to provide a call for action and showcase how evidence proven delivery of care for patients in Sweden suffering from non-healing wounds, in particular diabetic foot ulcers, pressure ulcers and lower leg ulcers. The project also seeks to document the full resource allocation relating to the treatment of wounds in Sweden - knowledge that has not been updated in the past 20 years.

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Surgical Site Infections

Project period: 2017–2020

EWMA is currently working on a document on the prevention and management of surgical site infections (SSI) in hospitals as well as community based health care settings. The document will be developed by an interdisciplinary author group.

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Post-Graduate Nurse Wound Curriculum

Project period: 2015–2020

EWMA is working on a European curriculum for post graduate nurses, with the objective to support more standardised content in post graduate nurse education on wound management.

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Atypical Wounds

Project period: 2018–2019

EWMA aims to provide an overview of wounds that are considered atypical. EWMA focuses on the challenges for clinicians and/or patients in terms of prevention, treatment and organizational perspective and presents the best available treatments at the moment.

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Pressure Ulcer Prevention & Patient Safety

Project period: 2016–2019

The European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (EPUAP) and EWMA have agreed to initiate a joint European advocacy project. The work is partly inspired by the EWMA collaboration from 2012-2015 with the Eucomed Advanced Wound Care Sector group (AWCS) in relation to the EU Joint Action on Patient Safety and Quality of Care (PaSQ).

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Wound Centre Endorsements

Projet period: 2016–ongoing

EWMA is currently developing and testing a wound centre endorsement programme, aiming to support the development of high quality and multidisciplinary wound centres as well as increased knowledge sharing and collaboration between existing wound centres around the world.

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Advanced Therapies in Wound Management

Project period: 2017–2018

EWMA wish to investigate the barriers and possibilities of advanced therapies  in the next generation wound management. As a primary deliverable EWMA will develop a document including an introduction to available advanced technologies.

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Antimicrobials and Non-healing Wounds

Project period: 2012–2013

The overall aim of this document is to highlight current knowledge regarding use of antimicrobials, particularly in non-healing wounds, to discuss what still is controversial and give suggestions for future actions.

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Oxygen Therapies

Project period: 2016–2017

The EWMA Oxygen Therapies Guidance document will provide practice-oriented guidance on the current use of various forms of oxygen therapies for wound treatment. 

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Negative Pressure Wound Therapy

Project period: 2014–2016

Since EWMA published a Position Document on “Topical Negative Pressure in Wound Management” in 2007, Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) has developed considerably. On this background, EWMA is developing a guidance document, which will focus on a wide array of factors influencing the organisation and use of NPWT.

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SWAN iCare

Project period: 2012–2017

The SWAN iCare consortium aims to develop a conceptually new therapy system equipped with information and communication technologies. EWMA is partner in this EU FP7 consortium and will contribute amongst other things by bringing the perspective of the patient and end users into the device development process.

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Management of Patients with Venous Leg Ulcers

Project period: 2015–2016

EWMA and Wounds Australia have developed this document, aiming to highlight some of the barriers and facilitators related to implementation of VLU guidelines as well as provide clinical practice statements to overcome these and “fill the gaps” currently not covered by the majority of  available guidelines.

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eHealth in Wound Care

Project period: 2012–2015

As a deliverable for the United4health project, EWMA published a document on eHealth in wound care in 2015. Since 2013 EWMA has dedicated resources to the discussion about use of eHealth services in wound management. Our aim is to provide guidance and relevant information about how to evaluate and implement eHealth services that may contribute to improved wound management and patient quality of life. 

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United4Health

Project period: 2012–2015

The United4Health consortium aims to exploit and further deploy innovative telemedicine services implemented and trialled under the RENEWINGHEALTH project. EWMA is the only partner organisation representing clinicians in this EU CIP consortium.

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Home Care-Wound Care

Project period: 2013–2014

Provides an overview of the main approaches to the organisation of wound care within home care settings across Europe. It also underlines the importance, scope, and level of the appropriate skills and gives recommendations for the interdisciplinary set-up necessary in order to provide safe, high-quality care for wound patients and support for their families

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Managing Wounds as a Team

Project period: 2013–2014

The document provides a universal model for the adoption of a team approach to wound care. A Joint Position Document by AAWC, AWMA & EWMA in collaboration with IWGDF 

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EWMA Study Recommendations

Project period: 2013–2014

Provides a clinical study guideline for the novice researcher working within wound care (leg ulcers), but the guideline may also be relevant for article reviewers, as educational material or a checklist for the experienced researcher.

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Debridement

Project period: 2012–2013

Provides an updated overview of the debridement options and offer a clarification of the principal role of debridement within wound management

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Wound Survey Germany

Project period: 2009–2010

EWMA is currently conducting a "Cost of Wound Care Survey" in Germany. Results from this survey are expected to be ready in 2016. The survey will identify the number and type of wounds as well as treatment regimes and will provide an estimate of the amount of clinician time and inpatient bed-days directly attributable to wound care at an organisational level.

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Wound Surveys in UK and Denmark

Project period: 2009–2010

EWMA has conducted a "Cost of Wound Care Survey" in UK and Denmark. They give an indication of the number and type of wounds as well as treatment regimes and provide an estimate of the amount of clinician time and inpatient bed-days directly attributable to wound care at an organisational level.

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Evidence and outcome measures

Project period: 2009–2010

Provides recommendations on the accepted level of rigour for studies in wound management and to develop a consistent and reproducible approach to define, evaluate and measure appropriate and adequate outcomes in RCTs as well as clinical studies.

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Eastern & Central European Leg Ulcer Project

Project period: 2007–2011

The EWMA Leg Ulcer Project was implemented from 2008-2012 with the main objective of developing, implementing and evaluating an appropriate model of care for patients with leg ulceration.

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