Geriatric clinical practice suffers from a gap between what evidence has shown to be best practice in the care of the elderly, and how care is actually carried out. This comes down to resources, says Martina Viduka, Registered Nurse by background, Co-Founder of Advosense. 

“Geriatric care is fragmented, it has outdated technology infrastructures. Additionally, healthcare providers face huge budget constraints. This lack of resources fails to meet the care needs of the patients because clinicians are unable to provide the type of care they hoped they could provide, based on learnings in the nursing school,” says Martina Viduka. An example of how that plays out is task management of care needs. “Nurses should be able to do simple tasks, such as feeding. But there's just not enough time for that so residents who need assistance, are eating cold. This is just a small example. Nurses have no time to spend caring for their patients and are just getting by,” illustrates Viduka. 

To some extent, the hope is that technology would help. The company Advosense aims to do just that: create technology to help and empower clinicians to know when, where, and how best to respond to their patients’ needs.  

Aiding urinary incontinence care

The first product of Advosense is a disposable brief with inlay technology to detect when patients are wet. “Many people think that urinary incontinence is a normal part of aging. It's not. Anywhere between 70 to 80% of nursing home residents, depending on where they live in the world, suffer from urinary incontinence. On top of that, patients often fall when they are getting up to go to the bathroom. They suffer from hospital-acquired infections, pressure ulcers, and urinary tract infections. Costs associated with incontinence are close to 330,000 euros per patient per year. But from my personal experience, this is one of the most difficult concerns for patients, families, and loved ones. When you're coming to visit your grandparent at a nursing home or in a hospital and you're finding them soaked in urine, that’s really upsetting for families to see. And it's not that the clinicians don't want to clean their patients, they just don't have the time or resources and they don't even know the patients are wet,” says Viduka. Awareness of this problem led the team to consider how they could ease the detection of when a patient is wet and to avoid unnecessary checkups nurses do to see if an individual has a problem. The disposable briefs with smart inlay technology monitor the patient’s dryness and can alert nurses about the need to change a patient when that need actually occurs. 

Geriatric care is increasingly important

With the aging population, geriatric care is the future of medicine. Healthcare will need to adapt to the specific needs of the elderly population. Germany, illustrates Viduka, is already adapting to that with additional training for nurses, embedded in the curriculum. “There is a general lack of education on the geriatric needs for this population across this continuum of care. However, we're starting to see a lot of innovative initiatives such as geriatric emergency training courses for clinicians being mandated as part of clinical on-the-job training in Germany. In January of last year, the act on the nursing professions came into effect. Now, nurses have two years of general training but now this includes a third-year enabling them to acquire a professional qualification where they can specialize in such things as elderly care.”

Advosense is on a mission to continue developing technologies that enable clinicians to provide better quality caregiving. “We really want to provide clinicians with data, but the right data and the right amount at the right time. And I think this can be really incredibly supportive in facilitating more effective care. Sensing technologies are huge and are really allowing for exciting innovations, but they need to be used correctly. And that's the key for us: to keep clinicians at the forefront of the technologies we're building. We really want to make sure that we're creating what is best and not something hindering the care, contributing to alarm fatigue. That's going to remain our focus in the long term,” says Viduka. 

Tune in for the full discussion.

Some questions addressed:

• Martina you are a Registered Nurse by background and worked in emergency and geriatric health for over 10 years. Can you describe geriatric care through your lens - what did you notice in your clinical practice? 

• Due to the aging population, the future of medicine is in geriatric care. The same way as pediatric care is different from adult health care, geriatric care is complex, because any field, may it be cardiology, intensive care, internal medicine, has to take into account the specifics of aging. Patients usually have comorbidities, polypharmacy, cognitive impairment etc. What are the general trends you see in the field and the way medicine is evolving due to the aging society? 

• Advosense exists to change the way we feel about aging, by championing dignity and respect in elderly care. Let’s talk about that a bit further. Where do you see the lack of dignity and respect?  

• Advosense is based in Germany, you got certified and worked in Canada. How would you compare the two markets? 

• Advosense is developing the next generation of incontinence care products. You developed disposable briefs with smart inlay technology that monitors the patient’s dryness. Why did you decide to start with this problem? 
  The mission of the company is to empower clinicians to know when, where, and how best to respond to their patients’ needs. We mentioned the disposable briefs with smart inlay technology. What else are you planning to address long-term? 

• You aim to transform the way we feel about aging and nursing care for the elderly. How can old age be cherished in the world where youth is celebrated and especially in the western world cherished as an ideal? 

• Can you name any geriatric care good practices and innovations that inspire you?