Swedish hygiene and health company Essity is launching a reusable digital sensor for improved incontinence care. The Tena SmartCare is available for professional and family caregivers.

The sensor is attached on the outside of a Tena incontinence product. Family members or care professionals are notified when an incontinence product needs to be changed.

This could, for example, ensure a better night’s sleep as the caregiver does not need to check and change an incontinence product unnecessarily. Once an incontinence product has been changed, the sensor can be easily attached to a new product. It thereby contributes to improved well-being and hygiene and enables the right actions to be taken at the right time, ensuring more optimal use of incontinence products.

Tena SmartCare will be available in several European countries and the USA before the end of the year. The sensor will be gradually launched across other markets in 2021.

“More than 400 million people globally suffer from some form of incontinence,” said Ulrika Kolsrud, president for health and medical at Essity. “Tena SmartCare is an innovative and sustainable product that enables more individualised incontinence care, which benefits the care recipient, the caregiver and society at large.”

Incontinence affects four to eight per cent of the world’s adult population. The digital products developed by Essity’s Tena brand can create value for the user, the caregiver and society. Essity is working to break barriers and the stigma associated with incontinence to help people live life to the fullest.

Essity is a hygiene and health company that sells in 150 countries under brands such as Tena, Tork, Jobst, Leukoplast, Libero, Libresse, Lotus, Nosotras, Saba, Tempo, Vinda and Zewa. It has about 46,000 employees. Net sales in 2019 amounted to approximately SEK129bn. The company’s headquarters are in Stockholm, Sweden.