For years, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has been calling for the development of low-cost, highly efficient toilets that can be installed just about anywhere in the world. These toilets would help improve sanitation, protect human health, and use water more efficiently.

While he has been singing this tune for quite some time, the key improvements and advances in toilets in recent years have primarily been designed to pamper the user. Heated seats, built-in bidets, motorized seats that “remember” each user’s preferred position on the toilet, voice controls, and calming music are undoubtedly lovely, but they won’t do much to protect human health.

The pandemic has changed all that. What are called “smart” toilets have been introduced, designed to provide a window on the health of the people who use them in communities worldwide.

This means that if the waste from toilets installed, for instance, in parts of Africa revealed abnormalities such as unusual viruses, germs, and other pathogens, public health officials could be called in to analyze the data. Their job would be to determine why this is happening, if these abnormalities are widespread and impacting the health of many people in that area, and if so, what steps are necessary to address it, potentially stopping a pandemic long before it has a chance to take root.

“If we could get this data from a toilet, I think it would be incredible,” says Sameer Berry, a Los Angeles–based gastroenterologist. “The opportunities are endless.”

Others agree with him. That’s why a consortium of businesses and nonprofits worldwide has started something called the Toilet Board Coalition. The Coalition’s goal is to provide health officials with evidence of a disease long before it becomes a full-blown disaster. This possibly could have even given us a heads-up about the coronavirus.

While it is not widely reported, scientists in Montana found traces of the pathogens that cause the coronavirus in wastewater in late 2019. This could have been considered an abnormality, the term used earlier, and prompted a further investigation. This investigation could have helped us prepare for the virus. In this case, however, it was too late. The virus had already arrived. The scientist concluded that these early traces of the virus were from the human waste of either asymptomatic people, those who had very mild cases of the disease or thought it was the flu, when in reality, it was COVID.

Now, due to the pandemic, all types of companies are becoming interested in developing smart toilets. Google, for instance, was recently granted a patent for a toilet that “assesses human physiological systems using noninvasive sensors.” These smart toilets can take someone’s temperature while they are using the toilet, measure cardiovascular health, and “test a person’s heart to see if their heart is healthy,” according to the patent.

But that’s just the beginning.  Other systems now developed or on the way have optical sensors that determine what type of waste is in the toilet, liquid or solid, looking for abnormalities such as color and stool consistency.

Taking this a step further, some toilets can now detect fingerprints. They identify each user by their fingerprints on the flush handle and, using that information, can detect any abnormalities this person might have, such as blood in the urine or the presence of unusual bacteria in waste.

It’s expected that we will find these smart toilets being installed soon in many parts of the world, except for one. “People, particularly in the U.S., are very squeamish and skittish about talking about their excreta,” says Vikram Kashyap, founder and CEO of a San Francisco startup called Toi Labs. Something that he says is less of a problem in other parts of the world.

Further, he says there are privacy concerns. However, due to the pandemic, he believes that even in the U.S., people may welcome smart toilets if they can help fight disease, give people more awareness as to their own health, and help prevent another pandemic.

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