More than two billion people worldwide live with lower urinary tract dysfunction — a group of bladder conditions including overactive bladder, incontinence and urinary retention. Beyond the medical risks, these conditions cause discomfort, embarrassment and social isolation, and are a known driver of anxiety and depression. Yet the most important number for managing them — how full the bladder is at any given moment — can today only be measured inside a hospital, with catheters, scans or handheld ultrasound probes operated by trained staff. Once patients go home, monitoring effectively stops, and problems are often detected only after they cause harm.
BladderWatch addresses this gap with a soft, skin-worn ultrasound patch that continuously measures bladder volume during everyday life. Unlike existing wearables and clinical ultrasound, the device is wireless, gel-free and flexible, runs on safe low-voltage electronics, and uses several miniature transducers together with a simple time-of-flight method to reconstruct bladder filling with high accuracy. Results are sent to the user's smartphone, so patients and clinicians can follow trends in real time without specialist equipment.
The project has three overall objectives: to optimize the wearable transducer and its integrated electronics for bladder measurement; to validate the device in laboratory and human studies with clinical partners; and to prepare its route to patients through intellectual-property protection and a clear commercialization plan.
If successful, BladderWatch can shift bladder care from occasional hospital snapshots to continuous, comfortable, home-based monitoring supporting earlier intervention, fewer hospital admissions and a better quality of life. The same platform can later be applied to other unmet needs such as pregnancy and fretal monitoring, deep-vein thrombosis, and fluid build-up in heart or liver disease, opening a broader market for non-invasive wearable ultrasound.
