Towards developing effective Continence Management through wetness alert diaper: Experiences, lessons learned, challenges and future directions

Incontinence is one of the major healthcare issues in everyday nursing care especially for frail elderly and patients with dementia (PWD) in nursing homes. Urinary incontinence and diaper use are prevalent in PWD due to decline in intellect and physical activities. They may lie in soiled diapers for prolonged periods resulting in indignity, discomfort, skin breakdowns and bedsores. In order to alleviate this, we propose a solution using wetness alert diaper capable of timely diaper change. In this paper, the experiences and lessons learned from initial evaluation trials with intelligent Continence Management System (iCMSv1) are explained. Then, desirable refinements and extensions are made to develop iCMSv2 enabling anywhere anytime continence management. We finally discuss challenges and possible future directions towards developing a new care model to manage incontinence effectively and efficiently.