The next disease-detecting technology could come to a bathroom near you—the Smart Toilet!
A toilet designed to detect a wide range of disease markers from urine and stool samples. The new technology can catch diverse cancer types and genetically predisposed conditions.
"Our concept dates back well over 15 years," says Dr. Sanjiv Gambhir, professor and chair of radiology. "When I'd bring it up, people would sort of laugh because it seemed like an interesting idea, but also a bit odd." With a pilot study of 21 participants now completed, Gambhir and his team have made their vision of a precision health-focused smart toilet a reality.
Learn more about how the toilet changed history:
The design of the toilet is ordinary with additional tools that use motion sensing to direct a tests that assesses the health of an individual through their excrement’s. The toilet will automatically collect data and send it to a secure cloud-based system for safe-keeping.
“In the future,” Gambhir said, “the system could be integrated into any health care provider's record-keeping system for quick and easy access”.
The innovation was described in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
"The thing about a smart toilet, though, is that unlike wearables, you can't take it off," Gambhir said. "Everyone uses the bathroom -- there's really no avoiding it -- and that enhances its value as a disease-detecting device."
Source: Science Daily
