00:00We groom or monitor our hygiene status, our personal health situation, and the privacy of our restrooms or toilets.
00:06VOA's Matt Dibble gives us a glimpse of new devices that track our discharges before they go down the drain in this VOA long-gone report.
00:17Each day, vast amounts of valuable health information are flushed down toilets.
00:24Stanford School of Medicine's Soongmin Park says there is an opportunity to improve health by closely monitoring human waste.
00:32Here's a prototype that we work on.
00:35Park is developing a smart toilet that can gather visual information about a user's stool and send it to health care providers.
00:42And we're looking at those X-Credits with computer vision and artificial intelligence to tell the early disease detection or even prevention of disease.
00:53The camera is located right behind this housing here.
00:58Park is working with South Korean manufacturer E-Zen to develop the first consumer version,
01:03which will be an add-on to an existing toilet with the capability to send basic health and nutrition advice to a user's phone.
01:10Park says future versions could monitor many conditions and even detect early signs of cancer.
01:18U-Scan, a device from French company Withings, samples urine.
01:23Urine is an amazing source of health information.
01:26Urine contains up to 3,000 chemical compounds.
01:30The system uses replaceable cartridges with enough tests for 90 days.
01:35All you have to do is just to urinate and that's it.
01:38A tiny pump is heat-activated and delivers drops of urine to a test strip.
01:43Which will react with urine and generate a color change, which we detect with an optical sensor.
01:49Test results appear on the app within minutes.
01:52Cartridges for monitoring fertility and nutrition will be available first.
01:57Tech is coming to the toilet, but it remains to be seen if users are ready to welcome these innovations into their most private routines.
02:05Matt Dibble for VOA News, Palo Alto, California.
