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Toilet-based continuous health monitoring using urine

Nature Reviews Urology volume 19, pages 219–230 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Regular health monitoring can result in early detection of disease, accelerate the delivery of medical care and, therefore, considerably improve patient outcomes for countless medical conditions that affect public health. A substantial unmet need remains for technologies that can transform the status quo of reactive health care to preventive, evidence-based, person-centred care. With this goal in mind, platforms that can be easily integrated into people’s daily lives and identify a range of biomarkers for health and disease are desirable. However, urine — a biological fluid that is produced in large volumes every day and can be obtained with zero pain, without affecting the daily routine of individuals, and has the most biologically rich content — is discarded into sewers on a regular basis without being processed or monitored. Toilet-based health-monitoring tools in the form of smart toilets could offer preventive home-based continuous health monitoring for early diagnosis of diseases while being connected to data servers (using the Internet of Things) to enable collection of the health status of users. In addition, machine learning methods can assist clinicians to classify, quantify and interpret collected data more rapidly and accurately than they were able to previously. Meanwhile, challenges associated with user acceptance, privacy and test frequency optimization should be considered to facilitate the acceptance of smart toilets in society.

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Fig. 1: Health-care spending and insurance coverage in the world and the USA.
Fig. 2: Wearable health monitoring publications highlighting sweat-based analysis.
Fig. 3: Toilet-based continuous health monitoring platforms.
Fig. 4: Future perspective of continuous health monitoring using smart toilets.

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Acknowledgements

S.T. acknowledges Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (101003361), and Royal Academy Newton-Katip Çelebi Transforming Systems Through Partnership award (120N019) for financial support of this research. We acknowledge Prof. Gary Curhan for giving feedback on this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Savas Tasoglu

  2. Koç University Translational Medicine Research Center (KUTTAM), Koç University, Sarıyer, Istanbul, Turkey

    Savas Tasoglu

  3. Boğaziçi Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Boğaziçi University, Çengelköy, Istanbul, Turkey

    Savas Tasoglu

  4. Physical Intelligence Department, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, Germany

    Savas Tasoglu

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S.T. researched data for the article, decided on the content, wrote the manuscript and reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission.

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Correspondence to Savas Tasoglu.

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S.T. is a co-founder of ZetaMatrix, Inc., focusing on novel bioinks for 3D bioprinting technologies.

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Nature Reviews Urology thanks Teerakiat Kerdcharoen and other anonymous peer reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Tasoglu, S. Toilet-based continuous health monitoring using urine. Nat Rev Urol 19, 219–230 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41585-021-00558-x

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