My guess is that fluids intake could be tackled to some extent by a measured drinking device. The difficulties are spillage being counted as consumption, simple and safe operation for people with lower cognitive, physical and sensory abilities, the need for hospital-level cleanliness of the device, and of course cost. I do not know why we do not have devices like this when people can die from lack of fluids.
A less obvious way technical people can help is to test the accessibility of their products. A device with a black button on a black background, or which in some other way obscures its controls and functions, is a failure in this respect. Make all the functions visible, easy to understand and easy to operate. Test websites with automated tools like https://try.powermapper.com/Demo/SortSite
I'd like to one day have a room-sized analysis unit which screens feces/urine of all attached toilets and performs various tests on it. Analysis results could be assigned to individuals based on the DNA footprint.
It could immediately tell you that your sugar intake is too high or that you should drink more water. With this kind of immediate feedback people will be able to live healthier because they can correlate food <-> result on their body.
Also we could do so many interesting studies..
Consumers have demonstrated that they're willing to save $5-20 a month in exchange for sending gym checkins[1], daily steps counts, or digital monitoring of their driving habits[2] uploaded to their insurers.
I don't think it'll ever be mandatory but I can see a day where the "discount" for agreeing to continuous monitoring and data upload is so great that it'd be cost prohibitive for the average consumer to not be a part of it. On the personal health front I think the biggest stopper is the cost of the data collection devices. That's what's relegated it to higher end targets like diabetic monitors (for now).
[1]: https://www.bluecrossmn.com/healthy/public/personal/home/liv...
I would be looking to my government to ensure such unwanted and unwelcomed intrusions into an individual's private life by private companies aren't required to achieve that. Whether that be through the nationalisation of such services or some other method. Anything else is an affront to the implied social contract which allows such private companies to profit from their activities in society.
Stupid thing is I need a 100M exit first to sponsor this kind of thing.
You're probably referring to gut bacteria, which live in your colon. It's true that a lot of research is being done towards these bacteria, and they appear to play an important role in various systems.
However, stools are usually coated in a thin layer of mucus -- which makes them a bit shiny and serves as a lubricant. It's unlikely that enough stool interacts with the toilet bowl to get much interesting data out of it. And even if it did, it would probably be contaminated by the presence of other people's stool.
This process felt extremely invasive. I would have killed for a toilet like what you describe, and I feel as though my physical/medical treatment would have been more successful.
(Somewhat tangentially, the food given at hospitals doesn't make sense for someone who has been nutritionally deficient for years).
Such a simple solution.
There have been attempts to build a wearable hydration sensor but no one has made the technology work reliably yet. It's a big potential market if someone can find a solution.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/09/bsx-announces-kickstarte...
One thing that's confusing and distressing to me is the amount of self-inflicted difficulty that the diseases seem to cause people to suffer from. If asking "What have you had to drink? Have you taken your meds? What have you eaten?" can cause them to feel so much better, what is it about aging, about the treatments, and about the disease that makes people neglect taking care of themselves?
It's usually hard to convince someone who is thirsty to not drink. Depending on who you talk to, the level of hydration that results from drinking when you're thirsty may not result in being completely well-hydrated, but that's not difficult or painful to do either - keeping a water bottle with me seems to get close enough. But it's not like you can blame the person with the disease. What's the systematic problem that causes so many elderly to suffer from dehydration?
Here's some recent research you might be interested in:
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2017/10/31/Major-EU...
When my grandma fought Alzheimer's over the span of a decade it was very striking to see that the effect of a lack of hydration and the disease itself kind of overlapped. When she had a particularly bad day we used to give her a saline IV and you could immediately notice how she cleared up and regained her brain powers after each IV.
I'm not up to date on current research into that direction, but I think hydration plays a very big role in Alzeimer's symptoms on the elderly.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but once I'm rich enough I want to build an elderly care center/hospital with urine-based hydration monitoring for each participant so family members can be sure that their loved ones have a healthy water intake each and every day.