News

Duke Faculty Members Pose Standing and Seated

| I/O Magazine

The Hard-Earned Lessons of Academic Entrepreneurs

Faculty entrepreneurs from Duke Engineering share their experiences of what it takes to spin a startup out of a university.

Sonia Grego

| News & Observer

Duke smart toilet flushes away poop but leaves valuable health information behind

Sonia Grego works in a world of poop. Scatological-themed artwork hangs outside her office alongside peer-reviewed papers on human waste. “We have poop emojis everywhere,” she said, pointing to a smiling tie-dye stuffed clump perched by her window.Then there’s the actual excrement, chilled in…

| Popular Science

A Scientific Exploration of Big Juicy Butts

BUMS. HEINIES. FANNIES. DERRIERES. Few muscles in the human body carry as much cultural clout as the gluteus maximus. “Butts are a bellwether,” writes journalist Heather Radke in her 2022 book Butts: A Backstory. Radke goes on to explain that our feelings about our hindquarters often have…

Presenting at DDW 2023

Abstract Accepted for 2023 Digestive Disease Week Conference

Our abstract "Smart Sampling Toilet - A Potential New Automated System for Collecting Fecal Calprotectin Samples" has been accepted for presentation during the 2023 Digestive Disease Week Conference this May in Chicago.

Presenting at Crohn's and Colitis Congress

Innovation from Academia to Market: Crohn's & Colitis Congress

Sonia Grego, director of the Duke University Smart Toilet Lab, presented on advances in development of the Smart Toilet at the Crohn's & Colitis Congress in Denver, Colorado on January 19.

Jose R. Ruiz and Sonia Grego won the Award of Distinction for their work "Hands-Free Stool Sampling for Remote Monitoring of Intestinal Disease"

Smart Sampling Toilet Wins Distinction at 2022 Digestive Disease Week Conference

Jose R. Ruiz and Sonia Grego won the Award of Distinction for their work "Hands-Free Stool Sampling for Remote Monitoring of Intestinal Disease"

| Triangle Business Journal

NIH Awards Grant to Advance Smart Toilet

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases awarded a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant to Coprata Inc. and collaborators at Duke University to advance the development of a Smart Toilet with artificial intelligence that will enable remote…

Jackson with Fingerprint Scanner

Adding Biometrics to the Smart Toilet

Research about fingerprint scanning difficult fingertips

| The Guardian

The smart toilet era is here! Are you ready to share your analprint with big tech?

Loo design has barely changed in 150 years - until now. Will people trade their privacy for the chance to find out exactly what is in their waste?

Toilet Paper with Data

| Wall Street Journal

Smartwatches Track Our Health. Smart Toilets aren't too far behind.

The next frontier of at-home health tracking is flush with data: the toilet. Researchers and companies are developing high-tech toilets that go beyond adding smart speakers or a heated seat. These smart facilities are designed to look out for signs of gastrointestinal disease, monitor blood…

Toilet Bowl

| Medical Technology

The smart toilet: a pipe's-eye view of gastrointestinal health

An AI tool being developed at Duke University is being developed to analyse human faeces to improve the monitoring of gastrointestinal health, raising the prospect of a ‘smart toilet’ that has these diagnostic capabilities built in. Natalie Healey speaks to one of the researchers behind the…

Toilet with wifi

Stool Image Analysis for Precision Health Monitoring by Smart Toilets

latest Smart Toilet research on stool image analysis using machine learning

| Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News

Disease Surveillance With Every Flush: Introducing the Smart Toilet

Every bowel movement is rich in information about our digestive health. So, why do we literally flush all that data down the drain? At the 2021 virtual Digestive Disease Week, Duke University gastroenterologist Deborah Fisher, MD, and engineering professor Sonia Grego, PhD, showed that…

| The Wall Street Journal

A Robot That Finds Your Lost Stuff and More AI-Enabled Gadgets to Come

Analyzing poop is an important way to prevent and diagnose gastrointestinal diseases, but the taboo around collecting it can make screening challenging, according to a 2014 study published in the British Journal of General Practice. Smart toilets could help change that.

| SciTechDaily

AI-Powered Smart Toilet May Soon Analyze Poop for Health Problems

An artificial intelligence tool under development at Duke University can be added to the standard toilet to help analyze patients’ stool and give gastroenterologists the information they need to provide appropriate treatment, according to research that was selected for presentation at…