Precision medicine is an emerging approach in healthcare aimed at tailoring medical care to the individual to achieve efficacious treatments and long-term wellness. As opposed to a health snapshot during a visit to a doctor’s office, precision medicine is empowered by time-dense, high-quality data and digital technologies.

Achieving the goals of health and wellness requires novel approaches to daily monitoring of analytical biomarkers from physiological fluids, such as our daily excreta – feces and urine – which are rich in latent data. In 2019-2020, this project team created the “Smart Sampling Toilet” – a novel device that has the potential to transform healthcare as a noninvasive source of individualized biological data. This device employs hands-off extraction to collect samples of human excreta that can later be used for diagnosis of wellness and disease.

In 2020-2021, the team advanced the project by building and testing a device that can dispense fecal immunochemical test strips and expose them to human excreta. After the sample is collected on the strip, the device sends a signal to an endoscopic camera, telling it to capture an image of the test results—one line if the sample is negative for biomarkers indicating possible gastrointestinal disease, and two lines if it is positive. Ultimately, this sensor will enable the establishment of wellness baselines for individuals with deviations, triggering health interventions and specimen extraction for separate biochemical assays at specific time intervals with no user intervention nor privacy concerns associated with a camera in a bathroom.

Timing

Fall 2020 – Summer 2021

Team Outputs

Deborah Fisher. 2020. "Automated Stool Image Analysis by Artificial Intelligence in a Smart Toilet." Digestive Disease Week.

This Team in the News

Bass Connections 2020-2021 Annual Report: Selected Highlights

Two Graduate Students Honored for Their Outstanding Mentorship

From Chopsticks and Cardboard to Functioning Prototype

Smart Sampling Toilet: Test Strip Dispenser Demo

'Smart Toilet' Uses Artificial Intelligence to Monitor Bowel Health

See earlier related team: Smart Toilet: A Disruptive Technology to Improve Health and Wellness (2019-2020).

Image: Katie Sellgren and colleagues, courtesy of Center for WaSH-AID