A Fully-Automated Smart Toilet Mount for Continuous Human Health Monitoring

Engineers at Stanford have invented a smart toilet platform that will autonomously monitor excreted waste from humans. We describe easily deployable hardware and software for the long-term analysis of a user's excreta through data collection and models of human health. The 'smart' toilet, which is self-contained and operates autonomously by leveraging pressure and motion sensors, analyses the user's urine using a standard-of-care colorimetric assay that traces red–green–blue values from images of urinalysis strips, calculates the flow rate and volume of urine using computer vision as a uroflowmeter, and classifies stool according to the Bristol stool form scale using deep learning, with performance that is comparable to the performance of trained medical personnel. Each user of the toilet is identified through their fingerprint and the distinctive features of their anoderm, and the data are securely stored and analysed in an encrypted cloud server. The toilet may find uses in the screening, diagnosis and longitudinal monitoring of specific patient populations.

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Figure description- A perspective view of a toilet with a mountable device for continuously measuring baselines of human excreta. The toilet system includes (1) a 10-parameter test-strip-based urinalysis with a retractable cartridge; (2) computer-vision uroflowmetry with two high-speed cameras (the blue dotted lines represent the FOV from each camera); (3) stool classification by deep learning (the blue dotted lines represent the FOV of the defecation monitoring camera); (4) defecation time measurement detected by a pressure sensor below the toilet seat (the red arrow represents the force applied to the pressure sensor); (5) two-biometric identifications, an analprint scan (the green box represents the template-matching algorithm) and a fingerprint scanner on the flush lever; and (6) the ability to transfer all data by wireless communication to a cloud-based health portal system. Right: photographs of the actual system mounted on a toilet.

Image credit: Adapted from the publication in Nature Biomedical Engineering

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