Many professions require the handling of objects. Handling a patient with a temporary or progressive loss of mobility is complex :

• ✔ Tendency to eat as much, with less physical activity, leading to excess weight.
• ✔ Reduced range of motion and pain associated with mobilisation
• ✔ Apprehension about using mobilisation equipment and movement support from a carer (e.g. holding onto a pole)
• ✔ Sometimes the need to work in confined spaces at home, where there is no space to handle equipment, requires carers to apply traction, with the risk of poor posture.

The ICK medical device uses compressed air to enable other types of intervention:

• ✔ Transfer urine collected below the meatus to a urine bag that can be attached to the back of a medical bed using compressed air, regardless of whether the collection site is lower than the storage site.
• ✔ Transfer the stools into a flexible collector under the anus that slides inside a cylindrical, filmed tube to a non-weight-bearing area of the body between the thighs or between the knees.

This innovative device uses a urine collection bag that can be removed, emptied in the toilet, and reattached to the device without leaving the wheelchair or the bed.

In certain cases, this innovative device can replace the use of adult diapers for micturition, thus avoiding the following
operations :

• ✔ Mobilize a person to a washbasin or a bed rail so that they can stand upright.
• ✔ Remove the used adult diaper, store it in a garbage bag,
• ✔ Stand behind the frail person on his/her legs, to wrap his/her pelvis with a new diaper, sometimes with a third missing hand,
• ✔ Remobilize the person so they can sit up again.

The ICK medical device treats the impact on elimination of a person with reduced mobility. Adult diaper are the most suitable solution for incontinent people. However, it is possible to use the ICK medical device with pulsed air to offer changes in support points and regular programming of the pumping of urine present or not in the flexible collector under the meatus.

Today, patients aged 65 to 85 are not at ease with electronic devices, but this will no longer be the case in 10 or 20 years' time, with the daily use of smartphones or voice control devices of the next generation.

Reduced handling in obese patients Healthcare

• Delayed treatment schedules and stress can sometimes cause caregivers to engage in poor postures that put their backs at risk.
• After the age of 50, caregivers often suffer from musculoskeletal disorders.
• On average, a caregiver carries a cumulative weight of 4 tons per day.
• This average can reach up to 8 tons per day on wards caring for obese patients.
• For all obese patients, the intervention of 2 caregivers is necessary, especially for each transfer or adult diaper change.
• It's not easy to synchronize the work of 2 busy caregivers.
• It is preferable to use all available equipment to enable one caregiver to work alone with an overweight person.
• The ICK medical device is designed for overweight patients (from 140 kg to 300 kg).

Several consecutive micturitions without carer intervention (fewer calls from patients)

Aftercare and rehabilitation clinics are designed to manage the transition between an accident, stroke or surgery and the return home, using therapeutic procedures to restore movement.

Patients in these facilities who are unable to go to the toilet themselves manage their eliminations as follows :

• ✔ Use of a female urinal, risk of leakage
• ✔ Use of a male urinal and adult diaper, then stretched adult diaper, risk of leakage
• ✔ Use of a bedpan, need for assistance
• ✔ Use of a Peniflow, urine tube must slope down to a collection bag, reduced mobility in bed
• ✔ Use of a walking frame, need for a carer

All of these activities require the availability of a caregiver, either directly or indirectly, after a leak with a sheet change.

With the ICK medical device, patients aged 20/60 are autonomous with the electronic control or the voice control of the device, which means that caregivers do not need to come, after patient micturitions and can only intervene after a bowel movement. There is no longer a need for rapid intervention and tasks can be grouped when a carer enters a room.

It should be noted that 30% of calls to this type of facility involve a need to eliminate . Widespread use of this device could reduce these calls by 10 to 15%.

After expelling faeces, the patient waits for the carer without being soiled. This innovation allows carers to continue with clean tasks and group dirty tasks together

According to best practice, care assistants should always separate clean and dirty tasks in relation to the risk of infection.

In clinics or homes for the elderly, it is better to group the elimination needs of all residents together, so nappy changing is scheduled for early afternoon, one to two hours after meals are served.

In any social or medical structure, everything that can be planned is planned, but the elimination needs of patients or residents cannot be programmed:

• ✔ When a patient with reduced mobility is scheduled for a treatment (scanner, medical consultation), a stretcher-bearer or taxi arrives at the scheduled time, and it is at this point that a carer may notice that the patient is dirty, in an adult diaper.
• ✔ During the distribution of breakfast trays, a carer discovers that a person is soiled in a night nappy and has to choose between changing the nappy or continuing with the distribution of trays.

This switch between clean and dirty tasks should be avoided.

To help caregivers in their daily work,

The ICK medical device is designed so that the disposable collector can be removed when the patient is sitting on the inflated horseshoe-shaped lift buoy on the seat of the wheelchair. In this case, a disposable underpad is simply placed under the anus and meatus, followed by intimate hygiene thanks to the space left between the thighs. These quick procedures require no handling and allow the patient to stay on schedule. This is in contrast to current practice, which involves rushing to change a nappy or even using a lift to do it on a bed, automatically postponing scheduled appointments.

Recording of micturition time and volume + stools / urine separation for bacteriological analysis

It is very convenient to use a flexible adult diaper that can be hidden under normal clothing, but the recovery of a soiled diaper does not allow the volume of urine or faeces expelled to be properly quantified, nor does it allow samples to be collected for bacteriological analysis. These controls are necessary in many cases, particularly in urology and gastroenterology departments. The ICK medical device proposes to date and count urine pumping cycles, which indirectly provides information on the volume of urine expelled, which can be compared with the water absorbed. It also allows urine to be collected from the urine bag for bacteriological analysis. The ICK medical device collects faeces in a removable flexible collector. When it is extracted from the cylindrical tube of the disposable collector, it can be medically analysed to detect the presence of bacteria such as Clostridium difficile. It also means that the amount of water to be drunk is not reduced, as with the use of nappy, because of their retention capacity, but above all because of the number of nappy allocated per 24 hours in institutions or the number of times a patient has to be changed at home. With a large prescription of medication, it is sometimes essential to drink enough, and the Elimatch range is designed to provide care in this way.

Reduced workload for nursing staff: Less leakage of faeces and urine : Fewer sheet changes when the patient is in bed

The urine bag can hold the volume of several micturitions, unlike the use of adult diaper (change required) No carer can't meet multiple elimination needs at the same time. Multiple patient alarms can cause stress for caregivers. Knowing that arriving too late for an elimination need will result in a change of a adult diaper with an intimate wash, which can take 10 minutes. The longer the delay between the first disposal and carer intervention, the greater the inconvenience and the number of items to be cleaned : use of more disposable items, the removal of soiled sheets and their replacement if the patient has to remain bedridden. Cleaning mattresses, wheelchair seats and floors can be time consuming. The ICK medical device is a response to staff shortages and, in particular, the time-consuming consequences of staff shortages in the management of elimination. ICK medical device suggests increasing the capacity to collect, channel and contain faeces and urine as effectively as possible to minimise leakage and neutralise the time-consuming consequences of understaffing and overworking and this while offering more flexibility in the organization of work.