• happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    In emergency the most important first step for abdominal issues was getting blood, urine, and faecal samples. Blood will tell you everything, but the latter two contain so much valuable data in pinpointing which organs are affected. If you catch some of those things early you spare yourself surgery. For demographics like geriatric patients or psych where their mental status is altered, they don't usually vocalise things like kidney/bladder/yeast infections until it's a life-threatening issue. Being able to detect blood/protein/sugar in the urine or blood in the faeces passing through a smart toilet would probably be one of the most useful things that could be put in a home/hospital room.

    Anonymised medical data collection is probably less of a privacy threat than carrying my smartphone around. The utility gain is worth it. Even without advanced stuff like culturing gut flora or detecting colon cancer/parasites/pregnancy it'd be so valuable for getting an early warning of something starting to go wrong just from basic lab value checks. And if you're shitting just 15 or 20 times per day you'll know almost within the hour that it started happening.

    • baby_trump [undecided]
      ·
      3 years ago

      And if you’re shitting just 15 or 20 times per day you’ll know almost within the hour that it started happening.

      :what-the-hell: how often do you shit comrade

      • happybadger [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oof, there's a question. I lose count when I start passing out. And do you want toilet shits or all of them?

    • Speaker [e/em/eir]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Okay, but why do they need to collect the data? If the sensors can detect these things well enough to send meaningful data off to some Fecal Bureau of Investigation, why can't the toilet just do the analysis locally and print out a little post-dump receipt with your numbers and then you can follow up with your actual doctor?

      • happybadger [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        That'd be the ideal implementation in my opinion, but I'm a Cybersen guy. The more data you have to work with the greater your level of affectation. Biomedical data can inform public health decisions on things like disease outbreaks, parasites, and lab values. That's the most non-invasive form of gathering it without voluntary submissions by doctors, but they're only gathering data from patients who actually go to the doctor. The patients who are particularly vulnerable to environmental illnesses have financial/physical/mental barriers to that.