Advances in Skin, Wound Care and Tissue Science

Biography

Dr Vickie R. Driver is a Fellow at the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons, licensed in Ma and RI and is board certified in foot surgery by the American Board of Podiatric Surgery. She has recently been nominated as Fellow, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons-Glasgow, PM. Her career has a special emphasis on wound healing and limb preservation and she is an outspoken ambassador for progressive change in this field. Dr. Driver is a Professor of Surgery in the Department of Orthopedics at Brown University (Clinical). She has recently completed her tenure as president for the Advancement of Wound Care Association (AAWC), and has served for 9 years on the Board of Directors. She also proudly serves as a member of the Wound Healing Society (WHS) Board of Directors- member at large and chair-Industry relations and as member Board of Directors for the Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI) Global Society and chair wound healing committee. She has successfully chaired an initiative to expand the wound healing clinical endpoints considered by FDA. She proposed a combined effort between the WHS and AAWC to develop the Wound-care Experts/FDA-Clinical Endpoints Project [WEF-CEP] to strategically identify clinically meaningful, evidence-based and patient-centered wound care endpoints that are relevant for clinical research and trials. The goal is to collaboratively work with the FDA to expand the list of acceptable primary endpoints, recognizing that new and innovative treatments, devices and drugs may not have complete healing as the focus. Furthermore, validated endpoints other than complete healing will promote improved clinical trial design and will reduce the time for discoveries to reach our patients. Over the past three years, through ongoing interaction with the FDA InterCenter Wound Healing Work Group [ICWHWG], the WEF-CEP team has conducted a wide reaching Clinician Survey with 628 participating wound care experts, completed an extensive literature review for 28 wound care endpoints using the FDA criteria for a validated endpoint, published the clinical survey results in WRR, is in process to publish the research phase results and is currently conducting a Patient Survey to augment the findings of the Clinician Survey. Formal collaboration with the FDA established to execute on the WEF CEP work is on-going. As principle investigator, she has served on and initiated more than 70 important multi-center randomized clinical trials, as well as developed and supervised multiple research fellowship training programs. She has co-authored over 100 publications and abstracts. Dr. Driver is Director, Translational Medicine Wound Healing at Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research. She is dedicated to making a scientific contribution to both the understanding of the natural history of disease and the discovery of new therapies and diagnostics to advance the treatment of patients who suffer with wounds and are at risk of limb loss. .

Research Interest

wound healing and limb preservation