April 10, 2026
This year’s Summit emphasizes action over awareness, ensuring every session concludes with a concrete deliverable and features structured audience engagement (live polling, Q&A, or discussion). The program flow moves intentionally from vision and policy (FDA/CMS) to implementation (industry and WCCC initiatives) to community activation (audience-driven collaboration).
Dr. Vickie R. Driver will commence the third WCCC Driving Innovation in Wound Care Summit with a compelling call to action, emphasizing the critical need to propel our medical field forward in the service of patients. She will present a concise overview of priority projects and initiatives that advance WCCC’s mission and strengthen long-term sustainability. Dr. Driver will outline three to five strategic imperatives that will shape WCCC’s trajectory. These initiatives will focus resources on clearly defined critical goals, financial independence, and digital transformation. By implementing these initiatives, WCCC will advance its mission through enhancing evidence and quality, reducing regulatory and coverage uncertainty, and facilitating a necessary transition towards higher value, technology-enabled wound care.
Drawing on complementary industry and clinical leadership perspectives, the speakers examine how CMS and commercial payer policy signals, evidence standards, and reimbursement realities translate into real-world adoption. This focused State of the Union highlights concrete opportunities for collaboration across industry, clinicians, and regulators to accelerate innovation, strengthen implementation, and improve patient outcomes.
This panel reviews recent RWE initiatives from WCCC’s Natural History Project, including highlights from three forthcoming publications that characterize patient complexity, wound trajectories, and outcomes in routine practice. Panelists will also discuss how these data inform endpoint selection, risk adjustment, and trial design. Panelists will discuss what these findings mean for clinical practice, trial design, regulatory and payer decision-making, and identify priority areas for methodological alignment and collaborative next steps to translate realworld data into measurable improvements.
This panel centers on the lived experience of patients with chronic wounds to inform the development and meaningful use of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in clinical trial design and real-world evaluation. Bringing together patients, clinicians, FDA representatives, and industry leadership, the discussion explores how patient priorities can be systematically translated into credible, actionable endpoints that strengthen regulatory decision-making and improve the real-world relevance of clinical evidence with FDA, CMS, and commercial payers.
This panel brings together representatives from the FDA, industry, and ECRI to discuss how regulatory approval and coverage pathways can be better aligned to accelerate patient access. Panelists will explore practical approaches to aligning evidence expectations across the product lifecycle, reducing uncertainty for stakeholders, and advancing patient-centered access. Discussion will include opportunities to reduce duplicative evidence requirements and improve predictability in regulatory and coverage pathways.
In the first keynote address, Ryan Egeland, MD, PhD (Chief Medical Officer, Solventum), will draw lessons from other therapeutic areas that have successfully navigated similar regulatory and evidence challenges, highlighting lessons applicable to the field today. From an industry perspective, it will discuss how Solventum is contributing to progress and why collaboration with an organization such as WCCC is essential to aligning stakeholders, changing the dialogue, and accelerating innovation and patient access, followed by audience Q&A.
This panel will explore how AI-enabled technologies and digital tools can strengthen clinical trial design, data quality, and real-world relevance in wound care including considerations for data governance, interoperability, and model validation. Panelists will discuss practical applications for improving patient monitoring, data readiness, and clinical decision-making, with a focus on scalable solutions that support both research and patient management.
Dr. Gunasekaran, President of Encoll Corp, will briefly discuss the pivotal role of collaboration with WCCC in advancing wound care innovation through a science-driven industrial perspective. He will emphasize how strategic industry partnerships, grounded in scientific rigor, are critical in generating credible evidence, achieving regulatory alignment, and accelerating meaningful progress in wound care. By integrating scientific expertise with industry insights, these collaborations are essential in improving patient outcomes and driving forward the broader field of wound care.
This interactive session will open with brief perspectives from organizations on their priorities and alignment with WCCC. The discussion will then shift to an audience-driven dialogue with industry, clinical, academic, and regulatory stakeholders, surfacing real-world challenges, shared priorities, and actionable opportunities that will inform future WCCC workstreams and collaborative initiatives.
This session will feature a visionary dialogue on the future state of wound care, including equitable patient access, a mature and interoperable data ecosystem, and deeper integration across FDA, CMS, and industry. Panelists will discuss practical pathways to build the infrastructure, regulatory modernization, and cross-stakeholder coordination required to achieve this future state. The discussion will be followed by a 15-minute audience Q&A focused on priorities and pathways to achieve this future state.
In the final keynote address, Rachana Visaria, PhD, Acting Director of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Devices within the Office of Surgical and Infection Control Devices (OHT4) at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), will discuss collaborative strategies to advance wound care innovation. Her keynote will address the role of real-world evidence in regulatory decision-making and highlight the FDA’s Total Product Lifecycle Advisory Program as a pathway to expedite review and market entry for breakthrough technologies with specific relevance to wound care innovation.
The closing session will synthesize key themes from the day and reinforce the WCCC call to action for advancing collaboration, innovation, and patient-centered progress in wound care. Final reflections will focus on next steps, shared accountability, and sustaining momentum across regulators, industry, clinicians, and patients, including how WCCC will operationalize priorities through its committees and work groups.
