Health care is undergoing a profound technological and digital transformation and has become increasingly complex. It is important for burns professionals and researchers to adapt to these developments which may require new ways of thinking and subsequent new strategies. As Einstein has put it: "We must learn to see the world anew." The relatively new scientific discipline "Complexity science" can give more direction to this and is the metaphorical open door that should not go unnoticed in view of the burn care of the future. Complexity science studies "why the whole is more than the sum of the parts." It studies how multiple separate components interact with each other and their environment and how these interactions lead to "behavior of the system." Biological systems are always part of smaller and larger systems and exhibit the behavior of adaptivity, hence the name complex adaptive systems. From the perspective of complexity science, a severe burn injury is an extreme disruption of the "human body system." But this disruption also applies to the systems at the organ and cellular levels. All these systems follow the principles of complex systems. Awareness of the scaling process at multilevel helps to understand and manage the complex situation when dealing with severe burn cases. This paper aims to create awareness of the concept of complexity and to demonstrate the value and possibilities of complexity science methods and tools for the future of burn care through examples from preclinical, clinical, and organizational perspectives in burn care.

A burn wound is a complex systemic disease at multiple levels. Current knowledge of scar formation after burn injury has come from traditional biological and clinical studies. These are normally focused on just a small part of the entire process, which has limited our ability to sufficiently understand the underlying mechanisms and to predict systems behaviour. Scar formation after burn injury is a result of a complex biological system-wound healing. It is a part of a larger whole. In this self-organising system, many components form networks of interactions with each other. These networks of interactions are typically non-linear and change their states dynamically, responding to the environment and showing emergent long-term behaviour. How molecular and cellular data relate to clinical phenomena, especially regarding effective therapies of burn wounds to achieve minimal scarring, is difficult to unravel and comprehend. Complexity science can help bridge this gap by integrating small parts into a larger whole, such that relevant biological mechanisms and data are combined in a computational model to better understand the complexity of the entire biological system. A better understanding of the complex biological system of post-burn scar formation could bring research and treatment regimens to the next level. The aim of this review/position paper is to create more awareness of complexity in scar formation after burn injury by describing the basic principles of complexity science and its potential for burn care professionals. Declaration of interest: The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Dutch Burns Foundation (DBF), Beverwijk, project 19.105. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.