A group at Stanford Medicine has established devices that can be fitted in a regular toilet to screen urine and feces and submit the encrypted health information. The innovation may be particularly useful for keeping an eye on people at high risk of establishing particular illnesses.
Lots of people will be uncomfortable with the concept of cams and sensing units in their toilet. It may seem like an unthinkable invasion into what is perhaps the most personal of all activities.
But a team of designers at Stanford Medicine in Stanford, CA, believe the scientific benefits of their “wise toilet” might be significant.
They are also confident that their toilet can safeguard the personal privacy of users.
Technologies that constantly monitor an individual’s health play a growing role in healthcare.
Existing gadgets include smartwatches for collecting information, such as heart rate, and wearable high blood pressure monitors. A skin spot remains in development that tracks motion, heart rate, and breathing.
” The important things about a clever toilet, however, is that unlike wearables, you can’t take it off,” says Prof. Sanjiv Gambhir, chair of radiology at Stanford Medication. “Everybody uses the restroom– there’s truly no avoiding it– and that enhances its value as a disease-detecting gadget.”
Prof. Gambhir thinks the wise toilet might be especially helpful for keeping track of individuals at high risk of conditions, such as prostate cancer, irritable bowel syndrome(IBS), and kidney failure, due to their hereditary predispositions, for example.
His group established a suite of gadgets that a person can suit the bowl of a common toilet. “It’s sort of like purchasing a bidet add-on that can be installed right into your existing toilet,” he states. “And like a bidet, it has little extensions that perform various functions.”
In a pilot research study, 21 volunteers tested the gadget over a number of months.
” The smart toilet is the perfect method to harness a source of information that’s generally disregarded– and the user does not have to do anything in a different way.”
— Prof. Sanjiv Gambhir
A motion sensing unit triggers the clever toilet to begin recording video data, which are then digitally