Care-In-A-Cup: A Solution to Tend to the Needs of Autistic and Differently Abled Women

Menstrual health is an issue that is often overlooked among communities. If we consider the statistics of autistic and differently abled women, approximately 1 in 500 or 0.20 percent or over 21 million people in India are autistic, and statistics of differently abled women amounts to 9.3 million in India. In health facilities such as hospitals, care centers, the extent to which caregivers tend to the needs of these women is often limited. This results in the lack of menstrual hygiene among the autistic and differently abled women. In this research a device is designed, implemented, and proposed as a solution to promote menstrual hygiene among all women, with particular focus towards autistic and differently abled women. CareInACup is a smart menstrual cup, an intelligent device designed to tend to the menstrual needs of women. The device has an array of features. Micro sensors embedded within the menstrual cup collect data from the cup. Results of analyzed data include period tracking, menstrual blood density measurements and gauging the volume of the flow. Caregivers can register all their patients on the app and use CareInACup to track the patients’ menstrual hygiene. All healthy women can also use CareInACup to care for their menstrual needs when they do not have sufficient time to dedicate entirely for menstrual care. The monitoring feature of the solution proposed alerts the caregivers or the individual woman user if any irregularity in menstrual health is noted, thus ensuring menstrual hygiene among women.