It may sound extremely odd, but in the future, your toilet could help save your life. At least, that could be the case if a team of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology get their way. They have created a “toilet seat-based monitoring system” that could help hospitals monitor patients for risk of congestive heart failure.
Integrated into the seat is a device that measures heart rate, blood pressure, and pressure oxygenation levels. Algorithms can take in all that data and notify health practitioners if the patient’s condition deteriorates. The researchers argue that the toilet seat could not only save lives, but it could also save hospital systems hundreds of thousands of dollars by lowering the readmission rate after a subsequent incident.
