Texas-based health startup Throne is developing a camera that clips onto the side of your toilet to take video of your evacuations, then uses AI analysis to provide a snapshot your gut health and hydration levels.
The company terms its tech “artificial gut intelligence”, and says that its AI is “trained by physicians to help you understand what your waste is trying to tell you about your health.”
"Our team of physicians manually review anonymized images to classify poop as healthy or unhealthy, spot the nuances in urine color for hydration levels, and identify other health indicators in your waste," it continues.
The camera is thankfully downward-facing, and Throne points out "We only capture images of the contents of your toilet bowl. Any other data is irrelevant to our mission and could compromise our ability to provide accurate health insights. We use image recognition technology to automatically delete any non-relevant images. This ensures that only toilet-related data is retained.”
Throne logs your logs according to the Bristol Stool Scale (you can follow the link, but may regret it). Data can be viewed on a companion app, which you can use to track your food, medications, supplements, and activities to determine what contributes to good (or bad) gut health.
The Throne is Bluetooth-enabled and is automatically activated when a registered user uses the loo. So different members of the household can each keep track of their bowel movements independently and privately, and guests using the smallest room won't have their poo probed.
All data is securely encrypted on the company’s servers, and users have full access to their data, which Throne will delete upon request, stating: “We do not access an individual’s data. Our team only analyzes anonymized, aggregated data, which means the data can’t be traced back to the original user – to you!”
The Throne smart toilet camera is currently undergoing beta testing and will sell for $499, but is currently available at early-bird pre-order pricing of $299. We don't yet know whether the product will be launched outside the US.
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