Thursday, 30 November 2023
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08:30
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Registration and Refreshments
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09:00
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Chair’s Opening Remarks
Peter Culmer, Professor in Healthcare Engineering, University of Leeds
Alan Cottenden, Emeritus Professor of Incontinence Technology, University College London
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Incontinence technology in low resource settings
Chairs: Peter Culmer, Professor in Healthcare Engineering, University of Leeds
Margaret Macaulay, Senior Research Nurse, School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton
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09:10
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Addressing the needs of people living with incontinence in humanitarian contexts – Experience and lessons learned from the field
Ioannis Georgiadis, Senior WASH advisor, Norwegian Church Aid
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09:25
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Understanding people’s experiences of using washable absorbent continence products and related service provision: A qualitative study in India, Papua New Guinea and Romania
Cathy Murphy, Principal Research Fellow, School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton
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09:35
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Enhancing Access to quality affordable Incontinence Products in LMICs: The Role of UNICEF
Muhidin Abdulla, Innovation Specialist (Assistive Technology and Disability), UNICEF
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09:50
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Challenges in one clinical environment in Nepal
Dr. Shirley Heywood, Fistula Surgeon, Karnali Provincial Hospital, Surkhet, Nepal
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10:00
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Question and Answer Session
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Keynote Session
Chair: Lesley Orme, New Product Development Manager, CliniMed
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10:20
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Keynote: Lessons from stoma care
Chris Bray, Lead Design Engineer, Welland Medical Limited
Chris Bray is the Lead Design Engineer at Welland Medical Limited, UK and he works primarily on products for stoma care. The technology and materials used in stoma care are often very similar to those found in incontinence products and both areas suffer from associated stigma. With this overlap, what can the incontinence market learn from the stoma market? Chris has agreed to share his knowledge and experience.
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10:45
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Question and Answer Session
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10:50
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Keynote: Your amazing bladder and its hidden potential
Jennifer Southgate, Professor, Universities of York and Leeds
No-one thinks about their bladder until it goes wrong, confronting them with an eroded quality of life and limited treatment options. Urinary incontinence is socially disabling, tackled using burdensome devices, therapies that treat only the symptoms, and with major surgery as a final resort. Congenital bladder defects, interstitial cystitis and recurrent infections all bring their own particular challenges. In this lecture, Jenny Southgate, Professor and Director of the Jack Birch Unit at the University of York will share research observations on how bladder tissues have evolved to a "fit-for-purpose" pinnacle. Using data-driven, biological, and medical engineering research approaches, she will explore how – in the future - these might be tailored to an individual’s urinary tract life needs.
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11:15
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Question and Answer Session
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11:20
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Networking refreshment break
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11:50
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Panel: Personal life experience of product users (International Patients)
Chair: Alan Cottenden, Emeritus Professor of Incontinence Technology, University College London
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Bowel and Bladder in Spinal Cord Injury
Chair: Alan Cottenden, Emeritus Professor of Incontinence Technology, University College London
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12:20
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Optimisation of transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation in modulation of micturition reflexes following spinal cord injury
Hannah Houliston, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Spinal Research Trust
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12:30
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Pilot study of dorsal genital nerve stimulation for management of bladder overactivity following spinal cord injury
Lynsey Duffell, Associate Professor, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH USA
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12:40
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The Bionic Bladder: towards complete electrical control of continence and micturition
Benjamin Metcalfe, Associate Professor and Head of Department, University of Bath
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12:50
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Abdominal Functional Electrical Stimulation for Bowel Management in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) (BOWMAN)
Tamsyn Street, Research Fellow, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust
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13:00
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Question and Answer Session
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13:10
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Poster Prize announcement
Peter Culmer, Professor in Healthcare Engineering, University of Leeds
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13:20
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Networking lunch
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Keynote Session
Chair: Alan Cottenden, Emeritus Professor of Incontinence Technology, University College London
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14:20
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Keynote Conditional Neuromodulation for Incontinence: a Possibility with Wireless Catheter-free Monitoring of Bladder Pressure
Margot Damaser, Senior Rehabilitation Career Scientist, Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs, USA
Sacral neuromodulation is standard of care for overactive bladder but does not well serve spinal cord injured individuals and those with neurogenic bladder. Conditional neuromodulation may provide improved outcomes but requires a signal of when to stimulate to prevent an unwanted bladder contraction and associated urine leakage. An algorithm is also required to review the data in real time and decide when to stimulate and when to stop stimulating. It is interesting to note that cardiac pacemakers are equipped with several sensed modalities as well as real time algorithms to adjust the pacing rate to current metabolic demands of the body. Nerve signals from the dorsal root ganglion have been tested to indicate an impending bladder contraction but require a chronically implanted electrode whose recorded signal will not deteriorate with time. We have developed a catheter-free, wireless, intravesical sensor which is inserted transurethral into the bladder and wirelessly transmits bladder pressure data. We have also developed the Context Aware Thresholding (CAT) algorithm to input this pressure data, determine when bladder contraction events occur, and decide when to stimulate and when to stop stimulating. We have tested this system with sacral neuromodulation in sheep and with dorsal genital nerve stimulation in spinal cord injured subjects. We have found that the system can trigger stimulation fast enough to stop an unwanted bladder contraction and that conditional stimulation significantly increases bladder capacity. This method has great potential to improve bladder control in those with neurogenic bladder.
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14:45
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Question and Answer Session
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14:50
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Keynote: Lessons from Origami
Spencer Magleby, Professor of mechanical engineering, Brigham Young University, Utah, USA
Origami - the art of paper folding - has been used for millennia to produce intriguing and decorative artifacts, but in recent years it also has inspired novel design approaches for such items as deployable space arrays, foldable safety barriers and expandable surgical devices. Are there any lessons here for incontinence technology? Might principles imbedded in origami suggest ways of enabling a product to flip easily between one configuration optimized for ease of deployment, and another designed to optimize its function when in place? How best can you fold planar sheets of material to achieve close and comfortable fits to curved body surfaces? In this presentation, Spencer Magleby – a professor of mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University, Utah, USA - will draw on examples of origami-inspired designs from a diversity of fields to provoke fresh thinking among the designers of incontinence technology among us.
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15:15
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Question and Answer Session
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Closing cornucopia
Chair: Andrew Gammie, Clinical Scientist, Bristol Urological Institute
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15:20
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Modelling vs. lab experimentation: a chicken and egg dilemma?
Thomas Daniel, Vice President Digitalization, BASF SE, Germany
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15:30
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Natural Homologous Biomaterials for Surgical Reconstructive Engineering of the Urinary Tract
Jennifer Southgate, Professor, Universities of York and Leeds
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15:40
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Conditional Neuromodulation for Incontinence: a Possibility with Wireless Catheter-free Monitoring of Bladder Pressure
Margot Damaser, Senior Rehabilitation Career Scientist, Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs, USA
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15:50
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Urodynamics without borders
Michael Jeffryes, Clinical Scientist, St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
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16:00
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Question and Answer Session
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16:10
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Chair's Closing Remarks
Peter Culmer, Professor in Healthcare Engineering, University of Leeds
Alan Cottenden, Emeritus Professor of Incontinence Technology, University College London
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16:20
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End of conference
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