Open fractures are bone fractures with simultaneous injury to the soft tissues in the area of the fracture. Complications frequently occur during the treatment of such injuries. The EXPERT project has set out to find out to what extent the care of patients with open fractures of the lower extremities and postoperative complications can be significantly improved by the introduction of so-called extremity boards. In particular, the project aims at proving that the complication rate and the duration of treatment can be significantly reduced. An extremity board is an interdisciplinary expert forum involving specialists from various fields (e.g. plastic surgery and infectiology) from university hospitals. The treating physicians can present their difficult cases here telemedically and receive a patient-specific interdisciplinary treatment recommendation.

In order to verify whether and to what extent extremity boards provide a measurable improvement in the care of patients with open fractures, an extensive clinical study with over 3000 patients is being conducted in the project. The task of OFFIS is the development of the data protection concept as well as the consolidation and quality assurance of the study data.