A wearable sensing system based on smartphone and diaper to detect urine in-situ for patients with urinary incontinence

Urine analysis is a routine clinical test technology for the diagnosis of diseases, which usually requires professional operators and relies on expensive and bulky instruments. It is difficult to collect urine of people who are suffering from urinary incontinence. Therefore, a low-cost and convenient device to detect urine in-situ is of great significance for these patients. In this paper, we developed a wearable sensing system based on smartphone and diaper to detect biomarkers of urine in-situ. The system was composed of a diaper integrated with an electrochemical biosensor, a portable detection device, and a data process application (App) on the smartphone. Thereinto, the biosensor with a self-locking valve free from urine scouring, was embedded into an ordinary diaper between the diversion layer and the absorption layer to measure the urine when wearers urinated. The detection device was applied to acquire the biosensor signal and wirelessly transmitted the measurement data to a smartphone. The App on smartphone drew the dynamic curves of urinary biomarkers over the time according to the data. The reported wearable sensing system not only reminded nurse to replace the diaper in time, but also provided the measurement data of urine biomarkers in real time to doctors to access the health status of patients, showing great application prospects to effectively look after the disabled elders in nursing homes. • A flexible multi-parameter biosensor was embedded into an ordinary diaper to detect urinary biomarkers in-situ. • A self-locking expansion valve was developed to eliminate the influence of urine scouring on the biosensor. • The sensing system reminded nurses to replace diaper in time and wirelessly transmitted detection data to doctors.