Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Summary:

The submitted manuscript presents a cost-effective, IoT based, urine output measurement device.

Comments: 

The manuscript is not formatted appropriately. Paragraph spacing and image placement is inconsistent, and does not follow journal guidelines. Line numbers are also missing from the manuscript. Extensive proof reading is required.

Figures 2,3,4,5,6 do not need to be in separate paragraphs. They can be concatenated into a single grid image to save space. 

Figure 7,8 can also be placed side-by-side.

Figure 7,8 are unreadable. Please improve image quality.

References need to be formatted according to journal guidelines.

Introduction and discussion sections do not provide enough context. There are multiple examples of IoT based measurement devices in the literature. The authors need to incorporate these when discussing their proposed design. A detailed literature review can also help in identifying future experiments and pitfalls.

The authors also need to elaborate on what type of further experimentation is required, and what data needs to be collected.

 

There are multiple run-on sentences. The Results section needs to be reworded to be more interpretable.

I would request the authors to have this manuscript reviewed by a scientific writer.

Author Response

Point 1. The manuscript is not formatted appropriately. Paragraph spacing and image placement is inconsistent, and does not follow journal guidelines. Line numbers are also missing from the manuscript. Extensive proof reading is required.

Response to Point 1. The manuscript has been proofread and reformatted using the recommended program LaTeX

Point 2. Figures 2,3,4,5,6 do not need to be in separate paragraphs. They can be concatenated into a single grid image to save space.

Response to Point 2. Figures have been moved to the end of each section.  They did not fit well in a grid.

Point 3. Figure 7,8 can also be placed side-by-side.

Response to Point 3. Figures 7 and 8 are not placed side-by-side because Figure 7 (now Figure 9 in the revised paper) belongs to the Results section, and Figure 8 (Now Figure 10) belongs to the Discussion section.

Point 4. Figure 7,8 are unreadable. Please improve image quality.

Response to Point 4. In previous Figures 7 and 8 (now Figures 9 and 10), image qualities have been revised, and the font sizes increased

Point 5. References need to be formatted according to journal guidelines.

Response to Point 5. References revised to fit journal guidelines

Point 6. Introduction and discussion sections do not provide enough context. There are multiple examples of IoT based measurement devices in the literature. The authors need to incorporate these when discussing their proposed design. A detailed literature review can also help in identifying future experiments and pitfalls.  

Response to Point 6. The introduction and discussion have been expanded to provide further context and other IoT-based devices.

Point 7. The authors also need to elaborate on what type of further experimentation is required, and what data needs to be collected.

Response to Point 7. Further elaboration is included in the discussion section.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article titled “Internet-of-Things Connected Urine Collection System to Automatically and Continuously Measure Urine Output”, unfortunately contains serious problems in terms of journal format and content quality.

The shortcomings identified as a result of a detailed examination are given below;

-         I think the working title is problematic. For a more general title, I advise authors to re-scan the literature. There may be another title such as "An IoT-Based Automatic and Continuous Urine Measurement System".

-         The format of the article is definitely not suitable for the journal format. It definitely needs to be fixed.

-         All figures should definitely be reviewed. It should be restructured to be more readable. Their resolution should be increased.

-         The format of the references is not suitable. All need to be fixed. Errors in spelling should also be corrected.

-         The word "article" or "paper" should be preferred rather than the word "project".

-         Hardware devices used in the article are given. However, there are no details about the methods. It would be helpful to give a general working diagram of the system, etc. rather than just giving how each piece of equipment will work.

-         The developed system should be compared with other existing systems. Comparison results should be presented in a table.

-         Why 20 attempts? Is this number of attempts sufficient? It is necessary to explain points such as how many numbers can be sufficient statistically.

-         Based on the journal template, the abstract should be limited to 200 words.

-         The monetary terms used in the article should be expressed either with the currency symbol or simply with the written representation of the currency.

-         In the introduction, a brief mention should be made of the material and method used in the study and the results obtained.

-         Bullets used in the Materials and Methods section should be used similarly to the formats shown in the template.

-         Sentences with bullet points should end with a punctuation mark.

 

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Point 1. I think the working title is problematic. For a more general title, I advise authors to re-scan the literature. There may be another title such as "An IoT-Based Automatic and Continuous Urine Measurement System".

Response to Point 1. The title has been changed to the recommended title

Point 2. The format of the article is definitely not suitable for the journal format. It definitely needs to be fixed.

Response to Point 2. The manuscript has been reformatted using the recommended program LaTeX

Point 3. All figures should definitely be reviewed. It should be restructured to be more readable. Their resolution should be increased.

Response to Point 3. Font sizes of figures have been enlarged

Point 4. The format of the references is not suitable. All need to be fixed. Errors in spelling should also be corrected.

Response to Point 4. The references have been reformatted using the recommended program LaTeX and MDPI template.

Point 5.  The word "article" or "paper" should be preferred rather than the word "project".

Response to Point 5. The word “project” has been changed to “paper.”

Point 6.  Hardware devices used in the article are given. However, there are no details about the methods. It would be helpful to give a general working diagram of the system, etc. rather than just giving how each piece of equipment will work.

Response to Point 6. Two new diagrams titled Figure 1 and 2 is included.  The methods section has been expanded to include more details.

Point 7. The developed system should be compared with other existing systems. Comparison results should be presented in a table.

Response to Point 7. The comparison is shown in Figure 8

Point 8.  Why 20 attempts? Is this number of attempts sufficient? It is necessary to explain points such as how many numbers can be sufficient statistically.  

Response to Point 8. The reason for 20 attempts has been added to the paper, and the standard deviations have been included with the calculations.

Point 9. Based on the journal template, the abstract should be limited to 200 words.

Response to Point 9. Abstract revised to less than 200 words

Point 10. The monetary terms used in the article should be expressed either with the currency symbol or simply with the written representation of the currency.

Response to Point 10. Monetary terms referred to USD.  $ sign removed.

Point 11. In the introduction, a brief mention should be made of the material and method used in the study and the results obtained.

Response to Point 11. The introduction has been revised to mention material, methods, and results.

Point 12.  Bullets used in the Materials and Methods section should be used similarly to the formats shown in the template.

Response to Point 12. Bullet points removed

Point 13. Sentences with bullet points should end with a punctuation mark.

Response to Point 13. Bullet points removed

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors tried to explain their work through "Internet-of-Things Connected Urine Collection System to Automatically and Continuously Measure Urine Output" where they explained how to remove the manual requirement of "nurse to measure the urine collected periodically." Although, I am not able to find the enough inventiveness in this work. The work is transferring data on the basis of IoT.

 

Good papers could be used like: a) Design and implementation of an ML and IoT based Adaptive Traffic-management system for smart cities b) Monitoring Ambient Parameters in the IoT Precision Agriculture Scenario: An Approach to Sensor Selection and Hydroponic Saffron Cultivation c) IoT Fog-Enabled Multi-Node Centralized Ecosystem for Real Time Screening and Monitoring of Health Information d) A secure and efficient signature scheme for iot in healthcare 

 

Authors should create the requirement of this system first (explain it well), with the existing system problems and benefits of this new proposal. This system can be used for any purpose instead of urine so it can also be generalized. Why only for urine?

 

Authors should take care of the formatting. It seems that the paper is written very casually. See the references format. 

 

Enhance the quality of figures used. Provide a comparison of similar kind of systems to prove the technique better.

At some places the quality seems low. Needs to work more on this paper.

Author Response

Point 1. Good papers could be used like: a) Design and implementation of an ML and IoT based Adaptive Traffic-management system for smart cities b) Monitoring Ambient Parameters in the IoT Precision Agriculture Scenario: An Approach to Sensor Selection and Hydroponic Saffron Cultivation c) IoT Fog-Enabled Multi-Node Centralized Ecosystem for Real Time Screening and Monitoring of Health Information d) A secure and efficient signature scheme for iot in healthcare

Response to Point 1. The scope of the paper was to develop a new way to measure urine output, and the title has been updated.

Point 2. Authors should create the requirement of this system first (explain it well), with the existing system problems and benefits of this new proposal. This system can be used for any purpose instead of urine so it can also be generalized. Why only for urine?

Response to Point 2. The introduction section has been expanded to address these issues.

 Point 3. Authors should take care of the formatting. It seems that the paper is written very casually. See the references format.

Response to Point 3. The manuscript and references have been reformatted using the recommended program LaTeX and MDPI template.

 Point 4. Enhance the quality of figures used. Provide a comparison of similar kind of systems to prove the technique better. Fonts of figures increased. 

Response to Point 4. A comparison of other techniques is shown in Figure 10

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made all the requested changes, and I'm happy with the current iteration of the manuscript.

Some minor comments:

-When reporting measurement error, it is standard practice to use mean/median with confidence intervals. Using terminology like "1-2 percentage error" is not appropriate.

- I am sure the specific gravity of urine used by the authors is accurate, but it should still include a reference.

- Line 223-225. I'm not sure what the authors are referring to. There are multiple publications that use change in urine output as a biomarker. Eg. https://bmcnephrol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12882-019-1678-2

 

My only comment is that sentences shouldn't start with conjunctions like "for, however". Eg. lines 210-215.

Author Response

Point 1. When reporting measurement error, it is standard practice to use mean/median with confidence intervals. Using terminology like "1-2 percentage error" is not appropriate.

Response to Point 1. Measurement errors changed to mean/median, standard deviation, confidence interval reporting.

Point 2. I am sure the specific gravity of urine used by the authors is accurate, but it should still include a reference.

Response to Point 2. References to specific gravity of urine and water added to paper

Point 3. Line 223-225. I'm not sure what the authors are referring to. There are multiple publications that use change in urine output as a biomarker. Eg. https://bmcnephrol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12882-019-1678-2

Response to Point 3. This section proposed measuring delta change in urine output rate, which is different from change in urine output. Mathematical notations (∆ml/hr and ∆ml/sec) added for better reader understanding.

Point 4. My only comment is that sentences shouldn't start with conjunctions like "for, however". Eg. lines 210-215.

 

Response to Point 4. Conjunctions used in the paper have been removed.

Reviewer 2 Report

As a result of the review, the comments about the study are as follows;

• In general, the desired corrections were made, and the suggestions were taken into consideration.

• In addition, the images used in the study should be added a little clearer and in accordance with the article format.

• If the figures are not close to the part mentioned in the text, it will increase the reading quality. Adding it to the end of the chapter causes confusion.

• In addition, if the materials and methods mentioned in the materials and methods section are presented under separate headings, it will be easier to understand the article.

Author Response

Point 1. In addition, the images used in the study should be added a little clearer and in accordance with the article format.

Response to Point 1. Some figures have been enlarged for easier viewing and the figures have been placed after each paragraph they are presented instead of the end of the chapter

Point 2. If the figures are not close to the part mentioned in the text, it will increase the reading quality. Adding it to the end of the chapter causes confusion.

Response to Point 2. The figures have been placed after each paragraph they are presented instead of the end of the chapter

Point 3. In addition, if the materials and methods mentioned in the materials and methods section are presented under separate headings, it will be easier to understand the article.

Response to Point 3. Materials and Methods have been separated into 2 different sections.