e-condom: Electronic Reproductive Health Solutions?

Intelligent devices designed to help mankind in decision-making and support has been a counter intuitive subject for long in self-care and in general healthcare. We all know how much our lives have been improved by technology and how much the healthcare industry has been boosted by science and technology.

Designing is not a definitive answer to questions of health and wellness, but rather the scientific integrations of the state-of-the-art designs with human behavior.

My clinical practice in the area of reproductive health and knowledge in human sexual behavior doesn’t not seem to blend clearly on how to address unwanted pregnancies; is it the lack of efficaciousness of contraception methods or the lack of alertness when the impending technology is about to “go burst ”

Would I not be happy to know when my food stock will not be usable so I can plan what to cook out of my fridge? Yes, and the technology is already out there! You can even tell on how long a given perishable product will last in your stock, amount of calorie on our food item and of recent science being engineered..........
for on-spot-personal-measurements of calories on your of food in a hotel according to your own mixing.

Wouldn’t it help to know when my medication is failing so I can go into another treatment even before I visit a doctor or seek attention before I get complications? Or would it not be of greater value if couples or those in sexual relationship could detect when a given contraceptive method is about to fail them?

In medical practice or more essentially in self-care consumer products, wouldn’t a definitive color change, signal, indicate the lack of usability for a particular health product? What if such a product would send a signal to my phone, or any usable portable gadget that it’s not working, I’m not protected or it’s out of order. My informatics intuitions revolves around birth control methods; an electronic contraception device (ECD) a systems that I think would offer value to staggering number of unwanted pregnancies due to contraception failure or even chances of sexually transmitted diseases due to protection failure.

e-condom or e-contraception

My informatics discerning drive propels me to address the scientific finding “Worldwide, 38% of pregnancies are unintended which is 80 million unintended pregnancies each year.^[1] Unintended pregnancies result in about 42 million induced abortions per year, and 34 million unintended births.^[2]  Condom failure rates put between 3-15% percent depending on who has done the study

If the above numbers were quite astounding what would be the likely solution? One would question the whether the failure is human negligence or the lack of support systems. What about IUFD’s, caps, and other devices that has been documented to have unnoticeable failure in practice? Yet we tend to promote them as effective and reliable?

Technology

Bio-sensors that would trigger leakage, tear or wear and can communicate to the user in a number of ways through change colour, link to a standby device set triggers.

The future is yet to reveal such a device!  

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^[1] J. Joseph Speidel, Cynthia C. Harper, and Wayne C. Shields "The Potential of Long-acting Reversible Contraception to Decrease Unintended Pregnancy, September 2008

^[2] Jusheela Singh, Jacqueline E. Darroch, Michael Vlassoff, Jennifer Nadeau Adding it Up: The Benefits of Investing In Sexual and Reproductive Health Care, 2003