Self-powered diaper sensors that monitor urine sugar levels | Hacker News Reader

Self-powered diaper sensors that monitor urine sugar levels

tus.ac.jp

62 pointsrustoo40 comments

Haha, piss-powered, Bluetooth-enabled diapers? Truly the Internet of Shit is upon us. And as somebody with two medical devices attached that communicate via Bluetooth, I can hardly be in opposition to the idea.

it'll be marketed to eldercare and in the end the only ones buying will be overly anxious parents of newborns

(anxious first time father writing this) :D

Hang in there - I’m not sure the anxiety reduces, you just get used to it!

I came here to rant about the amount of nappies in landfill and the waste increase in adding electronics.

I was quite wrong.

I do think that reusables where possible offer huge reduction in waste generation, but this is borderline irrelevant in the context of adults.

Congratulations!

"Put a chip in it!"

Makes me think: having chip on your shoulder is not something considered positive.

There's a few comments about baby diapers. It's not explicitly stated in the article or paper, but I believe this all pertains to adult diapers only, due to the fact diabetes prevention is mentioned.

Type 1 diabetes is not (known to be) preventable, and Type 2 diabetes must be inordinately rare in infants; if there's ever been a case at all.

Perhaps we're still a little while off receiving electronic notifications telling us we need to change our child's diaper.

It is implied that this is for adults:

> Moreover, to measure urine sugar levels in elderly or long-term care patients, sensors can be embedded directly into their diapers.

The paper itself explicitly states that it is for long-term care -- from its abstract:

> A self-driven sensor that can detect urine and urine sugar and can be mounted on diapers is desirable to reduce the burden of long-term care.

Modern diapers are remarkably complex. The super-absorbent polymer inside is really quite ingenious; and it's my understanding that brands have proprietary chemistry going on inside to prevent urea breaking down into ammonia and producing a smell, and damaging the patient's skin.

I sustained an injury to my spinal cord earlier this year, and all of this became much more personal – I have to say, compared to a urinary catheter (a device that can only be described as 'evil and tortuous') diapers are positively idyllic...

I think this is for babies.

Type 1 is not preventable, but detecting it is important as it could arise in infants (half of cases). Consequences are kind of hard if ignored / not detected. Then proper glucose monitoring can be set.

And more generally, detecting glucose level from urine is a bit late for any kind of diabetes. So pretty useless for Type 2 monitoring I think.

> arise in infants (half of cases)

Meant to inquire about this with my other response. Do you have a source for this?

My daughter was diagnosed at 2 (almost 3) and doctors gave the impression this is younger than average. We're also in many Facebook T1D parent support groups. There are certainly some diagnosed under 2, but it seems to be quite rare (1% maybe).

That's all anecdotal though. I'm genuinely curious about formal stats.

I'm not suggesting this wouldn't be useful for Type 1 diabetics. It certainly would! I've a Type 1 diabetic daughter who was indeed still (occasionally) wearing nappies/diapers when diagnosed.

Just that the paper/research in question has been conducted with adults in mind. Perhaps infants don't produce enough urine, I'm not sure.

I have been wondering for years when we will get automatic health diagnostics from our toilets. It looks like some of the tech is certainly cheap enough now.

You mean like this? https://s-there.com/

Careful there, Smart Pipe[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ

Interesting! It does not look like they are shipping a product yet though.

You can also buy a blanket for your infant child that will monitor their heart rate and blood oxygen saturation and transmit it to your phone, but that doesn't mean most people need or will even benefit from knowing that information.

Hopefully at some point we reach the point where we stop asking what else can be connected to the cloud and start considering what should not be.

Good luck getting my little guy to stay under the blanket. I did consider one of those "sock" monitors but I had to get too much baby stuff as is.

My wife kept wanting to get that for our kids. I told her no, because all it would do is increase her anxiety. So far we are 3/3 kids and all of them have been fine without it thus far.

Good one. there's gotta be some value in not having to stick needles in babies and old people quite so often.

Whether meant for adults or not, juvenile diabetes is real and often overlooked. Anyone who has children or ever hopes to have children should file away the fact that fruity smelling diapers/urine could indicate a real problem.

I expect this to appear in Marvin soon.

https://www.comicskingdom.com/marvin

> diaper sensors that can generate energy directly from urine

I'm guessing this could lead to light-up Huggies baby diapers.

"Takes the guess work out of busy parenting"

Already most diapers (for babies) have a yellow strip that turns blue with pee. No lights or electronics needed.

This system could issue an alert to send a nurse to change the diaper, which is a significant advance over requiring visual inspection.

Not really, babies need constant monitoring anyway so you will figure out the need fast enough.

Imagine a medical or long-term care setting where one person is monitoring 2 dozen patients.

I think they are aiming at the elderly; most babies dont need their glucose levels monitored constantly...

Ah, but does it flash? Can it been seen in the dark - without waking up baby?

why would you want that? nobody would wake a baby to change a diaper.

If it was a big squishy poop at risk of an overflow blowout I would.

You might be underestimating just how deeply children sleep.

My kid gets her diaper changed several times a night and sleeps through it. If she does wake up she cries for a drink of water then immediately goes back to sleep.

If the nappy can't handle another round of pee or poop then yeah I might consider waking the baby up to avoid them waking up thanks to the pee.

The secret is in changes before naps though :)

Light-up diapers sound like a rave fashion trend from hell. Maybe I should patent that just to prevent it from taking off until I'm too old to attend raves...

How about a litter box sensor for cat owners?

That’s easier. Just measure weight. When the weight goes up, and then comes down again, a cat has gotten into the litter box and probably done some business. Then you can activate automated systems to remove whatever has been deposited. This method also lets you track the weight of the cat, effectively for free. If you have multiple cats, then you need an RFID reader that either reads the chip you had inserted into their body, or an RFID chip that you put onto a tag on their collar.

If you’re more concerned about being told when it’s time to change the litter box because it’s too stinky, then you’re going to need to measure the stink.

Power from urine could work, but you’d need to capture that before it gets absorbed by the litter, otherwise you couldn’t measure it or generate power from it.

Delicious urine sugar.

An ancient way was pouring urine under a stone - if ants would be gathering , the patient was presumed sick.

They used to taste and examine urine as a medical exam. You can find old charts used for diagnosis called urine wheels. Diabetic urine is supposedly very sweet

I taste mine occasionally. I'm a licensed hypochondriac. To those that are into hillbilly medicine, try to get a taste for your urine right after a blood test, so you know what normal glucose in the urine tastes like. It should not be sweet at all.

There's an awful lot of piss-drinking going on here.

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