Computing technology is helping produce smarter homes and smarter cars, and now it’s the toilet seat’s turn in senior living residences.
TrueLoo is a new toilet with sensors that can analyze waste to monitor trends and patients’ health.
Developer Toi Labs is partnering with Baycrest Terraces, a senior living community in Toronto, to install the smart toilets, the companies announced this week.
Waste offers surprising clues about health. By tracking changes in urine, for example, TrueLoo helped reduce patient falls by 11% in a study last year involving memory care patients in California, Toi said on its website.
Falls are the leading cause of injury and death among adults age 65 and over, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The information TrueLoo’s “advanced biosensor system” collects gets sent to a care team’s dashboard and can provide daily wellness reports on a smartphone. In addition to removing the unpleasantness of care staff having to handle waste themselves, a smart toilet can process that information much faster, the company says.
Aside from its data collection capabilities, TrueLoo functions like a normal toilet and doesn’t require any change in user behavior, the company website states.
“Our partnership with Baycrest, a globally recognized leader in aging care, reflects the use of AI in a way that truly transforms how care is delivered to our most vulnerable population,” Toi Labs founder and CEO Vik Kashyap said in a statement.
TrueLoo is not the only “smart” toilet on the market. The Heart Seat, made by Rochester-based Catana, is being used by the University of Massachusetts in a study to see if the toilet can be used in place of an echocardiogram to monitor heart conditions.
