Posted by: Anne Holmes
Is Orwell's "Big Brother" 2 B A "Smart Toilet?" - 03/01/12 08:24 PM
I just read an incredible medical science article and I am sharing it here with you...
But fair warning, I wasn't totally sure whether or not I ought to post this article under "Health" or under "Humor" ... as I am sure there will be a lot of comics making jokes about one of the new age medical devices I just read about...
Apparently a Japanese company has just developed a "smart toilet" that can analyze the "content" it receives, then share this information with your doctor and even with your health insurer via email.
Not to mention that it can also trigger an automatic email to you -- telling you that - based on the results - your health insurance has just gone up. Or down...
The implications of this invention are huge: The developer says that on receipt of the toilet's email message, your doctor would now be able to evaluate online how you are doing, and track if you are following their advice and/or taking your prescriptions.
The diagnosis and subsequent recovery data is valuable for responsible patients, but the essence lies in health insurers capturing and tracking this data, as they can now do with car drivers.
You've no doubt seen the Progressive auto insurance commercial (they're the company with Flo as spokeswoman) that promotes their "Snapshot" dohickey that installs in your car and then tracks your driving habits in real time and reports them back to the insurance company. But I'm told that Allstate and State Farm also offer the same sort of monitoring.
And just as prudent drivers are rewarded with lower car insurance, apparently the concept with the smart toilet's advisories is that people who are proven-to-be-healthy/following doctor's orders could pay less for their health coverage.
But the concept seems very privacy invasive to me. And, of course, unless some sort of DNA monitoring is involved, I am not sure how the toilet absolutely "knows" who's providing the specimens...
I wonder how long until this monitoring becomes mainstream... 20 years? What do you think?
By the way, the article discusses a few other medical advances, but this was the one that captured my attention.
But fair warning, I wasn't totally sure whether or not I ought to post this article under "Health" or under "Humor" ... as I am sure there will be a lot of comics making jokes about one of the new age medical devices I just read about...
Apparently a Japanese company has just developed a "smart toilet" that can analyze the "content" it receives, then share this information with your doctor and even with your health insurer via email.
Not to mention that it can also trigger an automatic email to you -- telling you that - based on the results - your health insurance has just gone up. Or down...
The implications of this invention are huge: The developer says that on receipt of the toilet's email message, your doctor would now be able to evaluate online how you are doing, and track if you are following their advice and/or taking your prescriptions.
The diagnosis and subsequent recovery data is valuable for responsible patients, but the essence lies in health insurers capturing and tracking this data, as they can now do with car drivers.
You've no doubt seen the Progressive auto insurance commercial (they're the company with Flo as spokeswoman) that promotes their "Snapshot" dohickey that installs in your car and then tracks your driving habits in real time and reports them back to the insurance company. But I'm told that Allstate and State Farm also offer the same sort of monitoring.
And just as prudent drivers are rewarded with lower car insurance, apparently the concept with the smart toilet's advisories is that people who are proven-to-be-healthy/following doctor's orders could pay less for their health coverage.
But the concept seems very privacy invasive to me. And, of course, unless some sort of DNA monitoring is involved, I am not sure how the toilet absolutely "knows" who's providing the specimens...
I wonder how long until this monitoring becomes mainstream... 20 years? What do you think?
By the way, the article discusses a few other medical advances, but this was the one that captured my attention.