Research study published on “Development of a wearable monitoring system for patients with neurogenic lower urinary tract dysfunction (NLUTD)”

Dr. Jannik Lockl, CEO and Co-Founder of inContAlert, and his fellow researchers from the FIM Research Center, Claudius Jonas, Robin Weidlich, and Prof. Dr. Maximilian Röglinger, published a research paper in the renowned European Journal of Information Systems.

The increasing use of Internet of Things systems in healthcare provides new opportunities to monitor physiological parameters in real time. This study focuses on patients suffering from neurogenic lower urinary tract dysfunction who lack sensation and control of their bladder management due to diseases such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, bladder cancer, or paraplegia.

The study develops a set of design principles for wearable IoT-based health monitoring systems and evaluates them through workshops with healthcare technology experts, interviews with patients and doctors, a prototypical software architecture, and a field study involving patients. The resulting prototype demonstrates that extracting information on bladder level is possible based on infrared sensors combined with secondary sensor technology.

The results highlight the problems of neurogenic bladder patients who have difficulties emptying their bladder on time due to a lack of sensation. The wearable IoT system not only enables precise monitoring but also helps to positively influence patient behavior and integrate the system into daily life.

The full article can be read here: https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2023.2283173

Ethics vote granted by the Ethics Committee of the University of Bayreuth under number Az.O 1305/1 – GB. This study is registered in the German Register for Clinical Studies under DRKS00026995.