Our Story

It all began with Helle Wictor, a dedicated nurse working in elderly care in Helsingborg, Sweden. With extensive experience caring for elderly patients, many with dementia, Helle understood the daily challenges faced by both caregivers and families. One persistent issue stood out: monitoring patients’ toileting habits.

In these care environments, staff work closely with residents and their relatives. When a patient begins to behave unusually—becoming agitated, withdrawn, or restless—caregivers must investigate potential causes. This process is not only time-consuming but often inconclusive. A common but overlooked cause of these behavioral changes is constipation.

Without clear data on bowel movements, staff sometimes resort to administering laxatives, which can be harmful if the patient is not actually constipated. The consequences can be distressing: unexpected accidents in shared spaces, in front of other residents and even visitors, leading to embarrassment and additional workload.

Realizing there were no tools available to indicate whether a patient had had a bowel movement, Helle approached engineers at EC Solutions AB in Helsingborg in 2022 with a simple, transformative question:

“Is it possible to develop something that alerts nursing staff if a patient hasn’t used the toilet to poop in three days?”

She was clear about the requirements: the solution must be invisible so as not to confuse or alarm dementia patients, deliver reliable results at least an 80% detection rate, and fully respect privacy—absolutely no cameras.

With support from the City of Helsingborg, the EC Solutions team took on the challenge. The result? A groundbreaking project that became our solution.