NEWS HEALTHCARE
Wearable ultrasound from Nijmegen senses your ballooning bladder In 2014, a urologist from Twente needed a solution to measure bladder content from outside of the body. The answer: an external wearable ultrasound device. Now, the first product has successfully hit the market, with a follow-up expected in early 2020. CEO Rob Tweehuysen and CTO Reinout Woltjer explain how Novioscan created the Sens-U Kids. Jessica Vermeer
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hen giving children incontinence training, there are two main choices for the trickiest cases. Either provide the child with a timely alarm or put a moisture sensor in their diaper. The drawback, however, is that neither solution will teach the child to cope without an aid. The Nijmegen-based start-up Novioscan has developed an ultrasound device that enables external monitoring of the bladder. The small, wireless wearable can be positioned on the lower abdomen. With ultrasound, it’s able to measure the total bladder volume. At 80 percent, the device vibrates, notifying the child to go to the bathroom.
Credit: Novioscan
Twente and Utrecht
Five years ago, Novioscan originated from another Nijmegen company, Noviotech. The inspiration came from Ger Dijkman, a urologist from Twente. He was looking for a solution to externally measure the content of the bladder. Research showed that this was a common question in his field and an untapped market. Dijkman’s idea was to use ultrasound to detect bladder volume. Together with Jan-Jaap Koning, Jeroen Langevoort and Rob Tweehuysen, he decided to start his own company. At a Health Valley assembly, the foursome presented their plans. As it turned out, urologist Pieter Dik from the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMC) and medical entrepreneur Huibert Tjabbes 8
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were looking into a similar problem. In Twente, the main focus was to gain insight into how the bladder fills and empties under normal circumstances. In Utrecht, they were working on incontinence training for children that had followed multiple trainings already. They wanted a method to give biofeedback at 80 percent bladder volume. The two sides quickly realized there was an opportunity for collaboration. They co-founded Novioscan and secured a license agreement with the UMC. The hospital was able to offer valuable support, as it was perfectly equipped to help such initiatives. There were budgets available for spin-off activities and support with clinical research.
Sens-U Kids
Since the bladder just grows with fluid volume, a device was built to determine how big the organ is. “Our Sens-U Kids product generates an ultrasound pulse, looks at the reflection from the front and back wall of the bladder and the time difference between the two. That difference is then converted into millimeters using the speed of sound,” explains Novioscan CTO Reinout Woltjer. “From six to eight measuring points in one plane, the volume is then calculated.” Though the Sens-U Kids is capable of monitoring every second, it’s typically used to measure bladder content twice a minute. There’s an option to set a maximum thresh-
