Recently, Zhejiang Nursing Association officially announced the results of the inaugural Science and Technology Award selection. The project Intelligent Nursing Assessment and Intervention for Chronic Wounds, completed by the Chronic Wound Care Research Team of Wenzhou Medical University (WMU), was awarded the First-Class Award of the Inaugural Science and Technology Award of Zhejiang Nursing Association for its outstanding achievements in clinical nursing innovation and technological transformation and application—this award is one of the two top honors set up for this selection. Following the team's previous accolades of the Second-Class Award of the Science and Technology Award of the Chinese Nursing Association and the Wiley China Highly Cited Author Award, this is another landmark honor. The team has achieved a hat-trick of prestigious awards from national and provincial professional societies as well as a world-renowned publishing group, marking that its research strength has received comprehensive recognition from authoritative platforms across multiple dimensions. Its relevant achievements have been presented at numerous international and national academic conferences, and the team has maintained a leading position in the development of China's chronic wound care research field.
The award-winning project is a culmination of the team's efforts rooted in clinical pain points and dedicated to in-depth technological innovation. Addressing the core challenges faced by 13 million chronic wound patients in China, including inaccurate assessment, shortage of clinical resources and great difficulties in nursing intervention, the team innovatively integrated infrared thermography technology with artificial intelligence algorithms to build a domestically leading intelligent assessment system for chronic wounds, and formulated tailored intervention plans in conjunction. This has driven a leaping upgrade of chronic wound care from an "experience-based" model to a "precision-based" one.
The achievement captures microcirculatory changes in local wound tissues by virtue of infrared thermography technology, and combines AI algorithms to automatically identify key indicators such as the risk of chronic wound occurrence and healing trends, effectively solving the industry pain points in traditional nursing—strong subjectivity and heavy reliance on the clinical experience of senior medical and nursing staff. At present, the relevant outcomes have realized the transformation and commercialization of 2 patents, truly fulfilling the goal of "translating research into clinical practice and serving clinical needs", and the core papers have been selected into the 100 Excellent Papers of the Chinese Nursing Association. Prior to this, the project had already won the Second-Class Award of the Science and Technology Award of the Chinese Nursing Association, the top scientific and technological honor in China's nursing field, thanks to its solid research foundation and extensive industry influence. Another research of the team on predicting the mortality risk of ICU patients with pressure ulcers based on machine learning earned the Wiley China Highly Cited Author Award; this achievement attracted academic attention with a high download volume of 334 times within three months, highlighting the international academic value and influence of the team's research outcomes.
This new recognition of the top scientific and technological award from a provincial professional society is another authoritative confirmation of the "four-in-one" research system constructed by the team. Relying on its profound academic influence and outstanding contributions to clinical practice in the international field of chronic wound care, Professor Cai Fuman and Professor Chen Aihua, core members of the team, have been successively elected as Fellows of the American Academy of Nursing, the most prestigious honor in the global nursing community. In recent years, under the leadership of the two professors, the team has built a complete research chain centering on the whole-process management of chronic wounds, which covers "basic animal experimental research, artificial intelligence analysis of clinical data, multi-center database mining, and clinical application and achievement transformation". The team has published nearly 30 high-quality papers in renowned international journals such as the British Journal of Dermatology (IF=9.6) and the Journal of Advanced Research (IF=13.0), with core papers selected into the 100 Excellent Papers of the Chinese Nursing Association. It has obtained 9 national invention patents and 7 utility model patents, led the compilation of 3 international wound care guidelines and 1 monograph, and established an infrared thermogram database for chronic wounds containing more than 40,000 images, which has become a core data resource and technology transformation platform in this field in China. The team's series of achievements have been exchanged and displayed at international and national academic conferences, continuously enhancing China's discourse power in the global chronic wound care field. Meanwhile, relying on the International Enterostomal Therapy Nurse School of WMU, the team has trained more than 370 professional talents for the whole country, and guided students to win more than 10 national and provincial awards including the national Gold Award and First-Class Award in the "Challenge Cup" competition, realizing the in-depth integration and synergistic empowerment of scientific research, teaching and clinical practice.
"The attainment of this achievement is the collective result of all team members who stay rooted in clinical practice and commit themselves to in-depth innovation, and it is also a profound practice of the 'patient-centered' nursing philosophy," said Professor Cai Fuman, Principal Investigator of the project. He noted that chronic wound care is an important livelihood issue bearing on the quality of life of tens of millions of patients. Taking this award as an opportunity, the team will further deepen interdisciplinary collaboration and inter-institutional cooperation, promote the popularization of intelligent nursing technologies in primary medical institutions and home care settings, enable research outcomes to truly benefit more patients, and contribute the strength of WMU to improving the overall level of chronic wound care in Zhejiang Province and even the whole country, as well as advancing the construction of Healthy China.
Winning the First-Class Award at the Inaugural Science and Technology Award of Zhejiang Nursing Association once again demonstrates WMU's disciplinary leading position in the field of chronic wound care. In the future, the School of Nursing of Wenzhou Medical University will continue to focus on the high-quality development of the nursing discipline, increase efforts in scientific research innovation and achievement transformation, empower clinical nursing practice with more groundbreaking research outcomes, and continue to exchange and promote research outcomes on international and national academic stages, writing a new chapter for the high-quality development of China's nursing cause with the distinctive strength of WMU.
