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The Design and Development of an Ambient Sensor System to Detect Incontinence
Hannelore Strauven, Hans Hallez, Vero Vanden Abeele, Bart Vanrumste
Session: Poster session II
Session starts: Thursday 24 January, 16:00
Hannelore Strauven (KU Leuven e-Media Research Lab)
Hans Hallez (KU Leuven imec-DistriNet )
Vero Vanden Abeele (KU Leuven e-Media Research Lab)
Bart Vanrumste (KU Leuven e-Media Research Lab)
Abstract:
Introduction. Over 50% of nursing home residents suffer from incontinence. Effort has been made to improve incontinence care management in nursing homes by measuring incontinence episodes and saturated incontinence material automatically. Although, most research uses sensors that are integrated in the incontinence material or attached to or implanted in the patient. Here, an unobtrusive alternative is presented.
Materials and method. To detect urinary incontinence episodes in the air, off the shelf ammonia (NH3) gas sensors are implemented in the sensor system design. Sensors to detect ambient parameters such as temperature and humidity are integrated to improve the reliability of the sensor system. Through an ammonia dilution process, from 375 ppm to 12 ppm (i.e. in line with the typical NH3 concentration of urine), the possibility to detect urinary incontinence episodes in the air is validated.
Results and discussion. The output signal of the gas sensors is proportional to the presented NH3 concentration in the dilution process. Furthermore, semiconductor gas sensors show a higher sensitivity than electrochemical cells for this application. The ambient parameter temperature strongly influences the gas sensors’ output signal.
Conclusion. An ambient sensor system is presented that is able to detect NH3 up to concentrations comparable with the NH3 concentration in urine. Since the design is unobtrusive, it has little direct impact on the resident and fits in with other electronics present in the nursing home. Also, the system measures continuous and does not require extra actions from care personnel. Further research should include urine detection, sample preparation in incontinence material and measurements in the field.