A project in Stockholm may result in better night sleeps without being woken up by health care staff. Also the project may reduce the number of urine leaks by half. It is one of the very first tests of smart incontinence protection for elderly citizens. The test was a part of Stockholm’s Smart City project that digitalizes and evaluates services at an early stage, and then scale those up who create citizenship benefits. The smart incontinence project is still under development.
The smart incontinence protection contains censors that track fluid. Then the incontinence guard has a removable Bluetooth transmitter which sends the information collected by the censors to a smartphone app used by healthcare professionals.
The advantage of this type of incontinence protection is that it will be easier for the staff to change the protection by the help of the app, before the user knows their degree of fluid. Another advantage is that the staff do not have to disturb the sleep of the user to check whether the incontinence guard need to be replaced.
The incontinence protection was tested on a total of 10 users with the following results:
- Incontinence shields were more likely to be dry when replaced (95 % for smart incontinence protection, compared to 75 % for standard protection)
- The number of leaks was halved.
- Users received an average of more than two nights extra more per week without change and interruption, giving at least six hours uninterrupted sleep.
- The smart incontinence protection requires significant change in staff work routines.
The final report recommends proceeding and carry out a larger evaluation of smart incontinence protection on a larger scale.
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