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. We’re talking about apps that use smartphone cameras to analyze samples or toilet-integrated sensors that provide real-time health telemetry.

🚽 Flush with cash: Toilet tech

Digital wellness startups are knocking on the bathroom door. While not approved yet for official diagnostics, they offer tech-enabled testing devices and services that might help clinicians identify bladder cancer and other serious medical conditions.

• Vivoo: This wellness-tech startup offers at-home urine test strips that users scan with a smartphone app. Their machine-learning algorithms analyze chemical changes — including the presence of blood — providing a digital readout that bypasses the user’s own color perception. Vivoo has raised over $21 million to date, including a recent $13 million Series B round led by Draper Associates.
  
• Withings: With a full ecosystem of industry-leading smart devices (including watches, scales, and blood pressure monitors), their U-Scan device is a hands-free urinalysis lab that sits inside the toilet bowl. It automatically monitors biomarkers and sends results to an integrated app. Withings remains a private powerhouse, having raised over $115 million to dominate the smart wearables and devices ecosystem.
  
• Olive Diagnostics: This Israeli startup has developed an optical sensor that mounts to any toilet. It uses spectroscopy to detect molecules in urine in real time, including targeting the early detection of blood for high-risk populations. An AI system analyzes molecule concentrations and flags possible outliers. They’ve raised $10 million in grants and seed funds.

Saving lives, one toilet at a time.

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