Incontinence Consure Medical

"As a member of the first class of Stanford-India Biodesign fellows, our team spent hundreds of hours observing healthcare delivery in various settings, looking for the most important needs to address. But the inspiration for the project we ultimately chose came from a more personal experience. During our training, a team member who happened to be a physician had to take a short leave to look after his mother while she was in intensive care. When he returned, we jokingly asked if he had found any problems that we should focus on solving. To our surprise he said, “I had access to all of the right resources and I knew everything about the type of care she needed to receive. The only problem I couldn’t solve was her fecal incontinence.”

From our own observations, we knew that fecal incontinence was a common problem in the ICU because patients suffering from critical illness often have limited control over their bowels. It becomes potentially life threatening when sedentary patients develop pressure ulcers that, in turn, become infected through contamination from their stool. In geographies outside of India, some technology solutions were available, but none had been widely adopted. In India, the standard of care was adult diapers, with family members expected to play an active role in changing and cleaning their loved ones. Wearing diapers is not only humiliating, but offers little protection from infection for compromised skin tissue.  Additionally, caretakers find it awkward and unpleasant. A better solution is desperately needed. Unfortunately, because the condition is distasteful and uncomfortable to talk about, medical technology companies have been uninterested in tackling the problem.

We knew we were the right team to address this challenge. After years of additional research, product development, and testing, we developed -- with teammate Sandeep Singh -- a first-of-its-kind device to improve the management of fecal incontinence. It uses a hygienic applicator to divert feces away from the body without allowing it to come in contact with the skin, so it significantly reduces the patient’s risk of infection. It also provides an elegant, more dignified solution to a yucky problem. And that’s good for every patient we reach."