Understanding the evidence behind new products

In February, Convatec Continence Care held the most recent Continence Care Advisory Board meeting, attended by ten clinicians from across the UK, ranging from bladder and bowel service leads to urology and urogynaecology clinical nurse specialists. The meeting provided an opportunity for this diverse group of expert clinicians to share their opinions and feedback on a range of topics relating to caring for intermittent catheter users.

Alongside the theme regarding the importance of sharing experiences, challenges and best practice with fellow colleagues, as flagged up in last month’s newsletter, the clinicians highlighted the importance of understanding the evidence behind new and innovative products and how this will apply to clinical practice and improve care.
 

The latest evidence behind the third generation of intermittent catheters with integrated amphiphilic surfactant (IAS) was presented to the group. Burns et al (2025) recently published an ex vivo (porcine urethral tissue) study, carried out at Queens University Belfast, which adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that GentleCathTM with IAS FeelClean TechnologyTM requires lower withdrawal force than PVP-coated hydrophilic catheters, causes up to 53% less urethral damage than PVP-coated hydrophilic catheters and leaves no residue inside the urethra, unlike PVP-coated hydrophilic catheters1.

During discussions about what this evidence meant to the clinicians in practice, the group were clear that a deeper understanding of the evidence behind a product enables them to provide clearer guidance to patients and to align their recommendations more appropriately. The group was keen to disseminate more information to their teams and community colleagues, through regular training, and to put the evidence base into practice. As well as sharing with their clinical colleagues, there was a strong desire to share the research and evidence with patients to ensure they are well informed and empowered by their choices.

The key theme from these discussions was the benefit that strong evidence has on being able to offer an informed choice of products to intermittent self-catheter users which can potentially lead to better patient experience, quality of life and clinical outcomes.

Development process presentation and tour of the innovation centre

The final part of the meeting comprised a presentation on the design, development and manufacturing processes behind GentleCath^TM Air Women, as well as an overview of some of the latest continence care research testing in progress at Convatec’s Deeside innovation centre. This was followed by a tour of the different research labs.

Having already learned more about the evidence behind the GentleCath^TM product, the group were given an overview of how such a product is designed, developed and industrialised. This provided an insight into the level of engineering, testing and refinement that goes into developing what can appear to be a simple device.

The group were then guided through a number of different research projects that are currently being undertaken to advance continence care and deliver better patient outcomes. 

These included research to better understand risk factors for the development of urinary tract infections (UTIs) and how to mitigate them through the development of new features for intermittent catheters.
 

Reference

Burns J et al. An ex vivo porcine urethral model for investigating intermittent catheter-associated urethral microtrauma. Mater Des. 2025;259:114727. doi:10.1016/j.matdes. 2025.114727.