Study on a Sensor for Detecting Urinary Incontinence from Outside of Diaper

摘要

The amount of production of the disposable diaper for care increases with increase of the elderly population in Japan. Several warning detectors for urinary incontinence were developed, and some of them were marketed. These detectors use the disposable sensors. To reduce the effort and the cost to replace the sensor, we developed the reusable sensor to detect incontinence from the outside of the diaper. The developed system is divided roughly into the sensor unit and the alarm unit. The sensor unit consists of a pair of electrodes, a timer, a signal generator, a bridge-, a rectifier-, a smoother-circuit and a transmitter. The alarm unit consists of receiver and LED. The incontinence warning is informed to caregivers by the LED lighting. When the saline was absorbed to the diaper that was attached to the mannequin, the incontinence warning worked. Furthermore, the incontinence warning worked when a volunteer had incontinence.