Get Started — Free
Dr. Slaven Abdović, pediatric nephrologist at Children's Hospital Zagreb
Founder of BeDRY

Dr. Slaven Abdović

Pediatric nephrologist, PhD

Slaven Abdović treats children with bladder disorders at Children's Hospital Zagreb, where he worka in the Department of Nephrology since 2013. He is board certified by the European Society for Paediatric Nephrology, Editor in Chief of Paediatria Croatica, and the author of the research the BeDRY app is built on.

Children's Hospital Zagreb ESPN board certified PhD, University of Zagreb Editor in Chief, Paediatria Croatica
Qualifications

Training and certification

Twenty-seven years of medical training, and a subspecialty exam only two pediatric nephrologists in Croatia have passed.

Education

Board certification

  • 2013 Pediatrics — specialist board examination
  • 2019 Pediatric nephrology — subspecialty board examination
  • 2020 ESPN Board Examination, European Society for Paediatric Nephrology — one of only two pediatric nephrologists in Croatia to hold it
Clinical practice

What he does, day to day

Children's Hospital Zagreb is Croatia's tertiary referral center for pediatric nephrology. Bladder and bowel dysfunction is a large part of the caseload.

Conditions treated

  • Lower urinary tract dysfunction — functional, neurogenic, and anatomical
  • Bedwetting and daytime incontinence
  • Urinary tract infections
  • Congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT)
  • Glomerular and tubular disease, hypertension, kidney stones
  • Acute kidney injury, chronic kidney disease, transplantation

Procedures and techniques

  • Urodynamics and uroflowmetry
  • Standard urotherapy and bladder training
  • Animated biofeedback
  • Contrast-enhanced voiding urosonography (ceVUS)
  • Transcutaneous neuromodulation (PTNS, TENS)
  • Dialysis and continuous renal replacement therapy, therapeutic plasma exchange

Subspecialty training abroad at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (Division of Nephrology and Hypertension) and Wilhelmina Children's Hospital, Utrecht (pediatric urology, urodynamics and bladder training).

Academic work

Research, teaching and editorial

21

peer-reviewed articles indexed in Web of Science

468

citations (796 on Google Scholar)

7

h-index (Web of Science)

2

doctoral students mentored

Editorial and peer review

  • Editor in Chief of Paediatria Croatica, Croatia's peer-reviewed pediatric journal, since 2022
  • Reviewer for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, and others
  • Panel member, Croatian Science Foundation — evaluation of research projects, Memeber og Scientific Comittee of Croatian Pediatric Nephrology Society

Teaching

  • Supervises pediatric residents and pediatric nephrology fellows at Children's Hospital Zagreb
  • Lectures to parents on bedwetting and bladder health
  • Author of budisuh.eu, the first Croatian website on bedwetting written for families and primary care
  • Ernst Mayerhofer Award, Croatian Pediatric Society (2016) — best article by a young pediatrician
Funded research

Grants and awards

Competitive funding for the research programme that BeDRY grew out of.

Urinary biomarkers in overactive bladder in children

  • €150,575 — Croatian Science Foundation, installation research project UIP-2017-05-5379
  • Project leader, 2018–2022, Children's Hospital Zagreb
  • Produced the overactivity index — the measure behind Checkpoint

BeDry Diary & Bladder Training

  • €37,123 grant on a €54,000 project — NPOO proof of innovative concept, funded by the European Union — NextGenerationEU
  • Reference NPOO.C3.2.R3-I1.05.0211, completed January 2026

Secure remote consultation service

  • €25,000 to develop a secure service for remote consultation

Startup awards

Selected publications

The research behind the app

BeDRY is built on measures developed and published in the peer-reviewed literature, not invented for the product.

  1. Overactivity index: a noninvasive and objective outcome measure in overactive bladder in children Journal of Pediatric Urology, 2022 · doi:10.1016/j.jpurol.2022.03.012 · PubMed
    The measure Checkpoint uses to describe bladder activity from a diary, validated against urodynamics.
  2. Urinary brain-derived neurotrophic factor and nerve growth factor as noninvasive biomarkers of overactive bladder in children Biochemia Medica, 2022;32(3):030706 · doi:10.11613/BM.2022.030706 · PubMed
  3. Daytime and nighttime incontinence in children: use of a digital bladder diary Paediatria Croatica · Read the article
  4. Predicting posterior urethral obstruction in boys with lower urinary tract symptoms using a deep artificial neural network Principal investigator, study design and implementation, Children's Hospital Zagreb
Why he built this

The story behind BeDRY — how it came to be

BeDRY was not created in a startup incubator. It grew from years spent working with children and families struggling with bladder and bowel problems.

In this five-part series, I will tell you how a paper bladder diary evolved into a digital platform — the real obstacles and the lessons learned.

— Dr. Slaven Abdović

Part 1 How I became a pediatric nephrologist And how I stayed a curious kid → Part 2 The digital bladder diary It started with urgency, and ended with selling my car to fund the app → Part 3 Checkpoint and Your Bladder Score Building a usable diary interpretation tool — and a mascot called Pishko →
Read the full story →