Flush with cash: The rise of toilet tech

Seeing red can be either a bad omen or a life-saving early warning sign. That is, unless you’re among the one in 12 men to whom shades of red are tough to perceive. Recent research into bladder cancer has uncovered a diagnostic hurdle: color blindness. Catch the full spectrum of the story from Elie Dolgin for SN.

🚩 Why pink is a red flag

The science is as simple as it is frustrating. One of the earliest and most reliable symptoms of bladder cancer is blood in the urine. To a patient with standard vision, the water turning pink or red is a prompt to call the doctor. However, for those with red-green color blindness, that subtle shift in hue is often indistinguishable from a normal yellow tint. We’ve relied on a diagnostic infrastructure centered on a color-coded warning system that 8 percent of the male population cannot decode. While the data hasn’t yet reached the threshold for clinical policy changes, innovators are steering the industry toward digital, sensor-based diagnostics that remove human error from the equation.

🌈 Spectrum of opportunity

Companies that can digitize the home bathroom may be seeing some new green. Smart diagnostics include hardware and software that use spectral analysis to detect blood at concentrations the human eye (color-blind or otherwise) would never catch.