A toilet seat designed by Rochester Institute of Technology with biometric sensors in it to monitor and detect cardiovascular system. Any sign of congestive heart failure at home will be a noble effort for the diagnosis at an early stage.
University spinout Heart Health Intelligence will soon provide the complete data to FDA for clearance, after which can be available for public and hospital.
The device contains the sensors embedded in the high-tech seats will be privy to a person’s heart rate, blood pressure and oxygenation levels, as well as the amount of blood pumped out of the heart with every beat. It is battery-powered, wireless device and can e easily cleanable.
“In general, congestive heart failure patients after 30 days of hospital discharge, 25% of them are readmitted,” said Heart Health Intelligence’s founder and CEO, Nicholas Conn
Conn estimates the loss for one hospital readmitting 150 patients can top about $500,000 per year, while the cost of providing 150 of the company’s smart toilet seats would only total about $200,000.
The financial case for the toilet seats, Conn notes that per national average readmission rates, the penalty for readmitting 150 patients comes to about $500,000 annually. On the other hand, the total cost of providing 150 patients with the smart toilet seats from HHI would come to $200,000. That comes to about $1,333 and change for each smart toilet seat.
Recent trials with 38 healthy volunteers and 111 heart patients at the University of Rochester Medical Center, the smart toilet seat collected and analyzed heart measurements as effectively as hospital-standard monitoring equipment. The results of that study have been published in the JMIR mHealth and uHealth.
Patients who will be interested can install the new toilet seat.
Conn added, “The next step for the project is to demonstrate the clinical utility of the system by deploying to the homes of heart failure patients after discharge, and providing data to heart failure management teams to enable better disease management and improve outcomes, such as the functional status of these patients.”
