Stanford’s new ‘smart toilet’ will check out your anus

Yes, the toilet's makers are very aware that not everyone is especially open to the idea of a little scanner that checks out their butt, or the smart toilet concept in general.(ShutterStock)

From the lab of a Stanford professor comes a machine that the university is dubbing “a smart toilet,” and it features a wide array of impressive technology.

The device, which looks like a normal toilet, is able to monitor the health of its users by analyzing urine and stool samples to check for potential markers of disease, and it sends that data to a secure cloud-based system that could be integrated into health records.

Oh and also, it has an anus scanner.

“We know it seems weird, but as it turns out, your anal print is unique,” said Sanjiv “Sam” Gambhir, senior author of the toilet study. He explained in Stanford’s news release that the toilet needed some sort of identification system to match users with data, and their first attempt had some holes in it.

The initial thought, Gambhir said, was to have a fingerprint scanner on the flush lever, but this had a couple of problems. Firstly, plenty of toilets are hands-free, and secondly, there’s not always a guarantee that the person using the toilet and the person flushing the toilet are one and the same.

Enter a solution that Stanford cheekily calls “the polar opposite of facial recognition.” And yes, its makers are very aware that not everyone is especially open to the idea of a little scanner that checks out their butt, or the smart toilet concept in general.

“When I’d bring it up, people would sort of laugh because it seemed like an interesting idea, but also a bit odd,” Gambhir said, but he noted that the hidden value of the technology comes from the fact that everybody poops.

“The thing about a smart toilet, though, is that unlike wearables, you can’t take it off,” Gambhir explained. “Everyone uses the bathroom — there’s really no avoiding it — and that enhances its value as a disease-detecting device.”