And scientists at Stanford University have developed a simple colour-changing paper test that, with the help of a smartphone camera, can detect diseases or spot signs of a urinary tract infection.
“At the moment these are a mishmash of technologies rather than a single device, but the aim is to combine them together into a smart toilet," added Mr Lindenmayer.
“You don't need to monitor for everything, as you can get a lot of information about your health from a few key pieces of data.
“The idea is that people will connect their phone to the toilet and get information about their health. If it sees something amiss, then they would go to the doctor for more detailed tests.”
The ESA is currently looking for companies who will adapt their technology for use in smart toilets.
By putting sensors into public toilets, it would allow health officials to track and predict the spread of diseases in communities, giving a vital early warning of outbreaks.
“One of those is to establish preventive health information systems by combining health data from toilet smart sensors with satellite Earth observation data.
“If you have 1,000 smart toilets collectively monitoring certain diseases in an area, you can use space data to fill in the gaps and calculate the likelihood of spread of diseases.
“There are a number of environmental factors that influence how a disease spreads and can be monitored from space - temperature, for example, or if there is standing water nearby.”
One start-up company supported by MIT, claims to already be working on a solution that could also adapt many existing toilets into FitLoos.
It is developing a small unit that can placed inside the toilet by clipping it to the rim, where it can monitor urine as it passes over it.
The company, called S-There, which is based in Bilbao, Spain, claims the device can monitor for conditions like diabetes or look for signs of protein in urine that can be an indicator of other more serious diseases.
Adrian Gomez, co-founder of the company, said they hoped to have their device approved my medical regulators and on sale by 2020.
Source: The Telegraph 25th November 2018
