Wounds International 2023 Consensus: Use of wound antiseptics in practice // Striving to reduce surgical site infections

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Ojan Assadian was born in Vienna, Austria. He received a medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1997, the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2000, and a Master of Science in Healthcare Management from the Danube University Krems in 2022. Since 1999, he has been with the Medical University of Vienna, where he became Associate Professor in Hygiene and Medical Microbiology in 2003, “habilitation-“thesis: „Epidemiological methods for detection, analysis, and interpretation of nosocomial infections and pathogens with special resistance and virulence factors“.
In October 2004, he was awarded tenure track Professor at the Medical University of Vienna. Since 2005, he worked for the Medical University of Vienna as Senior Clinical Specialist and Chairperson of the Infection Prevention and Control Committee at Prince Court Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2008, he became acting Head of the Division of Hospital Hygiene/ Clinical Institute for Hygiene and Medical Microbiology at the Medical University of Vienna. In 2015, he was appointed as Professor of Skin Integrity and Infection Prevention at the University of Huddersfield, England, where his research and teaching work focused on diagnostic, treatment and prevention of infection, including wound infections. Because of personnel reasons, he returned to Vienna in 2017 and continued his clinical work as Consultant Infectious Diseases & Tropical Medicine and Consultant Clinical Microbiology & Infection Control at the Medical University of Vienna and the Vienna General Hospital, a 2,200 beds university teaching hospital. In December 2018, he became Medical Director of the Hospital Neunkirchen, Austria. Since December 2020, he serves as Medical Director of the Regional Hospital Wiener Neustadt, an 840 beds tertiary care healthcare facility south of Vienna.

Prof. Assadian is Past-President of the Austrian Society for Infection Control. His research interests focus on epidemiology of healthcare-associated infections; wound infection, prevention of surgical site infection, characteristics and clinical application of antiseptics, and infection control aspects of hospital construction as well as antimicrobial medical devices. He is reviewer of international journals, editor and author of two reference textbooks in the field of infection control, and author of more than 300 published peer-reviewed articles in international medical journals.

Michael is currently a Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist and the Labour Ward Lead at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust. He is an ambassador for Essity and led a project, reducing Caesarean Section SSI rates by 45% and readmission bed days by 61%.
Michael has an extensive background in leadership and patient safety. He has undertaken a Darzi Fellowship in Clinical Leadership in Healthcare, obtaining a PGCert with Distinction and whilst working at NHS Resolution published the national report; ‘Learning from Five Years of Cerebral Palsy Claims’. He is the Honorary Vice Chairman of the Baby Lifeline MultiProfessional Advisory Panel and is part of the review team for the Ockenden independent maternity reviews.

Lilian has extensive experience of setting up and coordinating a very successful SSI surveillance and prevention service at Guys & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (UK) from 2009–2022. Held roles within Digital Transformation and Infection Prevention & Control at Darent Valley Hospital & Sherwood Forest NHS Foundation Trust in 2022 & 2023 respectively. Very passionate about improving patient safety and with experience of working in digital transformation is exploring how best infection prevention and SSI prevention can be aligned with current digital transformation strategies or agendas in the wider National Health Service (NHS) and globally. Lilian previously worked as a microbiologist and quality assurance manager in the pharmaceutical industry, experiences that puts her is a strong position to collaborate effectively with industry and support all NHS and private hospitals in the UK and across the globe as part of global surgical site infection prevention (SSIP) work.

Lilian has been instrumental in coordinating global IPC and SSI experts with the formation of a new SSIP group which will be registered as a charity in due course.
She is an Infection Prevention Society (IPS) member, a former IPS Scientific Programme Committee (SPC) and Education & Professional Development Committee member and a current Hospital Infection Society (HIS) Guidelines Development Committee member

Melissa Rochon is the Trust Lead for SSI Surveillance, Research and Innovation for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. She has been on a number of national and international committees for SSI prevention, surgical wound healing, and the use digital images in wound care.

A nurse by background, Melissa has focused on prioritising the safety and experience of patients and carers across the surgical wound pathway. She has created a series of videos for patients and carers on surgical wound healing and wound infection prevention (endorsed by NICE, 2019), invented a patented surgical bra to aid healing following cardiac surgery, and developed an award-winning approach for improved information between acute and community care (‘Photo at Discharge’). Her current project includes a national research project examining the barriers and enablers for SSI surveillance (Target SSI study), and a multi-centre project introducing a proactive surgical wound surveillance programme using a progressive web app (Isla). Melissa is an (unpaid) clinical advisor for Isla.

Barbara is Head of Pharmacy at the University of Huddersfield. She was appointed as Professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of Huddersfield in 2010. Following her first degree in Pharmacy at Queen’s University, Belfast, she registered as a pharmacist in 1990 and practised full-time in community pharmacy until joining Aston University in Birmingham in 1992 to undertake a Ph.D. Her PhD research project at Aston was in the pharmaceutics and drug delivery field, focusing on microencapsulation for delivery of biopharmaceuticals.

Following completion of her PhD studies in 1995, she was employed in various posts at Aston University, including lecturer and senior lecturer and was Director of the M.Pharm. programme prior to moving to the University of Huddersfield in 2010 as Professor of Pharmaceutics. During this time, she also became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and supervised projects on the application of e-learning technologies in Pharmacy. She was also a Medici Fellow, specialising in driving forward innovation within the university sector and hold several patents in the pharmaceutical area. She has supervised over 20 Ph.D. students and on-going research programmes focus on chrontherapeutic delivery and delivery of antimicrobials, novel excipients for drug delivery, the mechanical properties of pharmaceuticals and excipients and the development of chewing gum delivery systems.

She has a number of successful collaborations with other universities, NHS and pharmaceutical industry leading to publications and development of new products.

Karen is Professor and Director for the Institute of Skin Integrity and Infection Prevention, University of Huddersfield, Visiting Professor, Queensland University of Technology and the Royal college of Surgeons, Dublin; previous academic editor for Wounds UK. She is elected chair of the International Wound Infection Institute and the International Skin Tears Advisory Panel (Europe). Her clinical background is in orthopaedics and tissue viability. She has over 30 years’ experience in both clinical practice and in academia. She is widely published (in excess of 140 papers) and has edited 2 text books.