Smart toilets could someday track personalized health data at home

In a paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers at Stanford University sketched out how such a diagnostic toilet would work and what it would be able to do. Features would include:

• A fingerprint-sending handle so the toilet would personalize to the user.
• Four cameras including an "anus camera."
• A urinalysis strip that would monitor urine for biomarkers including protein and nitrates, which are linked to kidney health.

How it works: The toilet would send data and images to a secure, cloud-based portal.

• Lest you think this is a joke, doctors are very excited about the potential health benefits of such smart toilets. "If we could collect data from the general population in a controlled clinical trial, it’s possible that you could use the existing platform to look for changes in urine or stool consistency associated with COVID-19," microbiologist Jack Gilbert told STAT.
• Though such a toilet is only theoretical at this point, it's part of a trend toward more wearable and at-home diagnostics that is likely to be accelerated by the pandemic.

The catch: First you need to find toilet paper.