A Stanford study finds that a disease-detecting “precision health” toilet can sense multiple signs of illness through automated urine and stool analysis.
Conceived by a group of Stanford University scientists, led by Sanjiv Gambhir, professor and chair of radiology at Stanford Medical School, the "smart" toilet is an ordinary commode fitted with motion sensing technology to deploy different tests that can detect a range of disease markers in stool and urine, including colorectal or urologic cancers. Samples are captured on video and then processed "by a set of algorithms that can distinguish normal urodynamics (flow rate, stream time and total volume, among other parameters) and stool consistencies from those that are unhealthy." The toilet can also deploy uranalysis strips to measure features such as white blood cell count, blood contamination, and protein levels that can be used to identify a range of infections, and even kidney disease and bladder cancer. The toilet automatically stores data extracted from any sample to a secure, cloud-based system, which in the future could potentially be integrated into physicians' record-keeping system for easy access.
The reports notes that the smart toilet "falls into a category of technology known as continuous health monitoring, which encompasses wearables like smart watches...Gambhir envisions the smart toilet as part of the average home bathroom." And since everyone uses the toilet, it enhances its value as disease-detecting devise. If 40% of the world's population has access to flush toilets that's a potential customer base of at least 2.8 billion people.
But in most homes more than one person typically uses the same toilet. How the does "smart" toilet differentiate between users? Well, it has a built-in identification system. As Gambhir notes, “the whole point is to provide precise, individualized health feedback, so we needed to make sure the toilet could discern between users.” But how exactly does it do that? Initially, Gambhir's team used a flush lever with a fingerprint scanner, but soon realized, however, that wasn't enough. "What if one person uses the toilet, but someone else flushes it? Or what if the toilet is of the auto-flush variety?" To solve the problem the team added a small scanner that images your...butthole. It turns out, like fingerprints, everyone also has a unique anal print. A combination of finger and anal prints should make it nearly impossible to results get mixed up. But don't worry, no one, including your doctor will see the scans. They will be simple used a recognition marker by the system to match users to their data. Bottom's up!
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