During pregnancy women have their urine tested at each visit to try and detect changes which may indicate illmesses such as infection or pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure and protein in the urine. This project is designed to assess the performance and feasibility of a home based device which may be used by pregnant women to self test their urine at home. This may lead to earlier detection of illness and improve outcomes for women in pregnancy. This study will take place in Cork University Maternity Hospital and will compare a newly designed Smartphone based urine analyser to the current laboratory gold standard automatic urinalyser. We aim to collect samples of urine from 400 pregnant women. 300 of these will be healthy normal pregnant women. 100 samples will be from women with suspected illnesses such as urinary tract infections or pre-eclampsia. These women will be recruited in the outpatient department and also from women admitted to hospital. They will be recruited over an 8 week period starting in June 2018. The smartphone urine analyser that will analyse and store the results of a Urine dipstick test that will be accessible by the patient, their General Practitioner and Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist.
If this project is successful it will allow us to trial home urine testing in pregnancy. This may lead to earlier detection of illnesses that have the potential to cause serious complications for the pregnant mother and her unborn child.
