The Bathroom Just Got a New Job
Throne Science sells a camera that fits on your toilet, uses AI to judge stool texture and urine shade, and charts the results in an app. Last week the company closed a $10 million Series A investment round.
CEO Scott Hickle says the goal is simple: "Our whole thing is, first of all, let's establish your baseline and then notice any significant deviations from that baseline." The Throne One camera costs $399, plus $5.99 a month, and recognizes you by your phone.
Competitors include:
- TOTO's Stool Scan, sold only in Japan at about $3,280, uses LEDs to gauge stool shape, texture, color, and amount.
- Vivoo's Smart Toilet tests urine for hydration at $99.
- Kohler's Dekoda clips on to screen stool for blood and urine for dehydration. It costs $599, plus a subscription from $6.99 a month.
- Withings' U-Scan mounts inside the bowl to check urine for hydration, nutrition, and kidney-stone risk. Starter kits run $380 to $450, and cartridges cost extra.
Why Your Toilet Is Suddenly So Smart
Brian Comiskey of the Consumer Technology Association says the category started picking up in 2023, helped by better sensors, AI, digestive-health concerns, and wearables. They belong to a broader trend in which sensors and AI quietly collect health data from ordinary items. A TOTO spokesperson calls the toilet an "immediate and ongoing interface" with your body.
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That consistency is why doctors like the idea. Patients are bad at remembering their own bathroom habits, so an automatic bowel diary gives gastroenterologists real data. Consumer interest is also rising as colorectal-cancer rates climb in younger people and common conditions like IBS send people looking for answers.
What Doctors Think of the Data
Kyle Staller of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School sees real value for constipation and IBS patients: "You have your patient's perception of what's going on, but it's nice to have some objective data to qualify that with."
Brennan Spiegel of Cedars-Sinai agrees. "I would use it," he says, especially when a patient is changing medication or checking how treatment is working.
Staller also worries about healthy people who start staring at every flush. "There's a potential risk of someone who doesn't have any issues becoming very obsessed with the data and focusing on things that aren't necessarily important," he says.
He cautioned that researchers have "still more data than what we know what to do with," and that "the hype is a little bit beyond the science at the moment."
A toilet can record what it sees, but digestion depends on diet, infections, air quality, genetics, hormones, travel, medications, sleep, and stress. Spiegel says a change in bowel habits "could mean any number of things," from an early colon-cancer sign to simply low fiber. Researchers have not validated a way for these devices to tell those possibilities apart.
What All This Means for You
These products are wellness tools, not diagnostic tests. TOTO's Bill Strang says, "We're not drawing any significant diagnostic outcomes on this. It's more of an awareness of your consistency and the trend line."
Hickle has a much bigger dream: a "smoke detector for colon cancer," he said. His company is working on imaging that can spot microscopic blood, plus sensors for gases and other biomarkers.
Real diagnosis would require FDA clearance, and Comiskey expects the industry to push that way, just as wearables did with heart-rhythm alerts. Even now, Spiegel notes, the devices can spot visible blood in the toilet but cannot say whether it comes from hemorrhoids, menstruation, IBD, or cancer. Comiskey expects this to become mainstream in six to 10 years, echoing computer scientist Mark Weiser, who said, "The best technologies often disappear into everyday life."
A toilet that tracks your health quietly could be the most invisible health monitor yet.
If you tend to ignore signs, that is a gentle nudge. If you overthink every twitch, the data gives you a new thing to worry about.
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