AI can analyze your poop. Should it? (Business Insider)

Smart toilets and toilet-mounted sensors are moving from novelty to an emerging health-tracking category, using computer vision, optical sensors and AI to automatically monitor stool consistency, color, volume, urinary health and bathroom patterns. The technology could give gastroenterologists something they rarely get from patients: a continuous, objective record of bowel habits rather than a retrospective stool diary. GI experts quoted in the article see potential value for patients with conditions such as IBS and constipation and for tracking responses to treatment. But the bigger question is what clinicians can actually do with all that data. Current systems can detect changes, but they generally cannot reliably determine why a change occurred or distinguish something clinically important—such as blood associated with colorectal cancer—from benign causes such as hemorrhoids, menstruation or IBD. The article explores how companies including Throne Science, Toto, Kohler and Vivoo are pushing toilet-based monitoring toward more sophisticated health applications, while experts caution that the technology is currently ahead of the evidence.