Acute and chronic wounds affect an increasing fraction of the world population. In this interview, Paul Basson, Regional Director Asia, URGO, shares with us about the Group’s activities in wound care and innovation.
Can you introduce us to URGO?
URGO Group has been a major historic player in improving quality of care and in helping relieve the burden of wounds. Our mission is wound healing, personal well-being, and health, and in 22 countries, 3,100 collaborators participate in this mission and 10 industrial production sites serve these needs.
With its two divisions, URGO Medical and URGO Consumer Healthcare, the Group is engaged with patients, healthcare professionals and the general public on a day-to-day basis.
We develop innovative wound dressings to address the increased worldwide need for care for chronic wounds, and give access to responsible healthcare solutions in the areas of first aid, nutritional supplements, sexual hygiene, common cold and allergies.
How does URGO assist in wound care?
Urgo Medical, the medical division of the Group, is one of the worldwide experts on the healing and treatment of acute and chronic wounds (venous leg ulcer, bedsore, diabetic foot ulcer, etc.).
We develop a range of advanced wound care dressings for healing acute and chronic wounds, with clinical evidence and a specific treatment protocol for each type of wound. In addition, we are heavily involved on a global level in R&D for innovative technologies to the best global standards. We see our solutions recommended and used by hospital staff (doctors and nurses) all over Asia, including Singapore.
As one of the pioneers in wound care management support, we have been looking at how the care and treatment pathway can be organised to impact wound-healing time, nursing time and cost of consumables. Beyond that, we provide regular medical education sessions, workshops and in-service talks to healthcare professionals and are part of wounds events all over Asia, working to offer healthcare professionals and patients innovative solutions to relieve their burdens.
How does URGO approach innovation and what are some of your current projects?
Innovation is in our DNA and we invest €20 million in R&D each year.
The mission of the Urgo Research, Innovation & Development (Urgo RID) teams is to devise, develop and transform ideas into concrete healthcare solutions in order to meet the needs of patients and healthcare professionals.
Our approach to innovation is based on ongoing dialogue with end-users, both caregivers and patients. It is this desire to meet their expectations that has enabled us to devise high-technology dressings and protocols responding to every type of wound.
We have made clinical research a fundamental point of our innovation to demonstrate the effectiveness of our products. Since 1997, we have conducted almost 55 clinical and observational studies covering almost 60,000 patients, and have obtained over 40 scientific publications in indexed reviews.
Within Urgo, we are also convinced that innovation is first and foremost collaborative. This is why we are developing a global approach to open innovation. We are currently part of Medilight, a European collaborative consortium that aims to develop a medical device that will provide personalised light therapy to patients with chronic wounds to enhance the self-healing process.
Interview with Paul Basson, Regional Director Asia, URGO
URGO Group is engaged on day to day basis with patients, healthcare professionals and the general public. The Group develops innovative wound dressings to address an increased need worldwide for the care of chronic wounds, and gives access to responsible healthcare solutions in the areas of first aid, nutritional supplements, sexual hygiene, cold and allergies. Find out more about URGO here.
Published in FOCUS Magazine — Issue #3 2017 “In the Pink of Health”
