SmartTRAK interviews two leaders from the Alliance of Wound Care Stakeholders to discuss its aim to be the unified voice for the wound care community, ensuring quality care for all patients with chronic wounds.

• Bacteria are becoming resistant to silver, making it less effective.
• Several existing antimicrobial technologies may induce cytotoxic effects.
• Silver dressings are commoditized, and the market is hungry for novel and innovative alternatives.
• Stricter medical rules (antimicrobial stewardship) now require clinicians to be more careful about how they use germ-killing treatments, as there has been a widespread habit of using these dressings on wounds that do not actually need them.

In the complete downloadable article, SmartTRAK highlights in detail four companies to watch in 2026 with advanced dressings that offer new approaches to attacking bioburden and infection while limiting antimicrobial resistance. They are:

• Convatec: Seeing Great Potential with ConvaNiox 
   Convatecis the global leader in the antimicrobial dressings market with its Aquacel Ag range. It is evident that they are convinced that ConvaNiox will be their next big brand in wound care ... (read more)

•  Polaroid Therapeutics
   Polaroid Therapeutics (PTx) is a Swiss-based biotech start-up developing innovative products and solutions using its proprietary novel antimicrobial technology  ... (read more)

SmartTRAK reviews how the changes to skin substitute reimbursement reforms may impact each site of service and what it means for patients, providers and manufacturers.

 In response to the meteoric rise in spending, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) enacted payment reforms, establishing a standardized reimbursement rate of ~$127/sq cm for skin substitutes across physician offices, mobile and hospital outpatient departments (HOPD). SmartTRAK believes that these reimbursement reforms could trigger an access-to-care crisis for some patients in the wound care sector. This could result in care being shifted to the high-cost, inpatient operating room (OR) for the most critical patients or lead to an increased number of amputations. The system may realize short-term savings on grafts, but the systemic result could be a spike in the total cost of care for some patients and, for others, no advanced care at all.

Since 2021, the US Advanced Wound Care Market has undergone a transformation defined by a "site-of-service" migration away from the hospital outpatient department (HOPD). As CMS implemented restrictive bundled-payment models in HOPDs in 2014 that capped reimbursement in “high” and “low” buckets, care began to shift toward... (read more)

• The Physician Office (PFS) - In the physician office (PO), the $127/sq cm rate could result in a "reverse triage" effect, where minor or complex wounds become ...(read more)