Researchers Want To Make You A Smart Toilet That Can Analyze Your Urine For Health Issues

Dhir Acharya - Nov 17, 2019

Many smart devices surround us these days, smartphones, smartwatches, smart speakers, and some researchers are thinking about making a smart toilet.

As technology is getting more and more advanced, there are now so many smart devices around us, smartphones, smartwatches, smart speakers, smart TVs, etc., and some researchers are even thinking about having smart toilets.

In particular, the Coon Research Group from the Mogridge Institute for Research and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is making a smart toilet with the ability to analyze urine to detect health issues.

According to their study, the urine passing through the toilet likely has the amount of data that can be used to discover health issues. Then, we can use this to generate a personalized medical approach.

You probably didn’t know this, but or urine contains traces of our nutritional habits, which include how we exercise, the medication we choose, our sleep patterns, as well as other choices in our everyday life.

In urine, there are metabolic links to more than 600 human conditions, and that includes some serious diseases relating to cancer, diabetes, kidney, and more.

The study involved two subjects collecting their urine samples over the course of 10 days. The samples were sent for tests with mass spectrometry and gas chromatography to obtain a close look at the metabolic signatures.

The test subjects harvested 110 samples in 10 days. They also used fitness bands for tracking calorie consumptions, heart rate, sleep duration, and steps.

The research’s sample size was small but the researchers managed to gain crucial data. for example, the two subjects recorded their alcohol and coffee consumption, as well as abundantly measured the biomarkers connecting to these drinks.

One of them consumed acetaminophen, which is the kind of paracetamol we often take when having a fever, and they spotted a significant rise in the iron amount.

Joshua Coon, the lead author of the study, said that the group was sure they could design a toilet with the capability of sampling urine. The real challenge, he thinks, is that they have to invest in engineering for making an affordable, simple instrument. That will decide how far the creation can go.