Scientists Want To Make A Smart Toilet That Analyses Urine To Predict The Onset Of Diseases

With the advancement in technology, we're seeing a lot of smart devices -- smart TVs, smart speakers, smart fitness bands, even smart homes! However now, some researchers want to bring these smarts to our toilets.

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The Coon Research Group (from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Morgridge Institute for Research) is creating a smart toilet that will constantly analyse urine that is passed through it, to check for health issues.

Their study, which was published in Nature Digital Medicine reveals, the potential of the amount of data urine carries to detect health issues. This data then can be used to give a personalised medical approach.

In case you didn't know, urine contains traces of an individual's nutritional habits, including the way he/she exercises, choice of medication, sleep patterns and other lifestyle choices.

Urine consists of metabolic links to over 600 human conditions, including some of the major diseases relating to the kidney, diabetes, as well as cancer.

For the study, two research subjects collected urine samples consistently for a 10-day period. These samples were then sent for tests with both gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to get an in-depth look of the metabolic signatures.

These test subjects collected 110 samples in this 10-day period. Moreover, they used fitness bands to track steps, heart rate, calorie consumption as well as sleep duration.

While the sample size for this research was small, they managed to dig out crucial data. For instance, the subjects kept a record of the coffee and alcohol consumption, and the biomarkers that connect to both these drinks were measured abundantly.

One of the test subjects consumed acetaminophen (regular paracetamol that's consumed during fever) and they noticed a considerable spike in the amount of iron.

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According to the study's lead author Joshua Coon, "We're pretty sure we can design a toilet that could sample urine. I think the real challenge is we're going to have to invest in the engineering to make this instrument simple enough and cheap enough. That's where this will either go far or not happen at all,"

He further adds, "If you had tens of thousands of users and you could correlate that data with health and lifestyle, you could then start to have real diagnostic capabilities, it might provide early warning of viral or bacterial outbreaks."