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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Kohler’s Dekoda will grade your hydration.
- Dekoda monitors pee, bowel movements, and blood in the toilet bowl.
- The device retails for $599 and launched on Wednesday.
You probably aren’t drinking enough water, and Kohler’s newest device tells you so — from your toilet. Kohler unveiled Dekoda, a sensor that attaches to a toilet to monitor hydration, gut health, hemoglobin, and more.
The device uses a spectroscopy sensor and a tiny camera to monitor what’s going into the toilet bowl. The sensors analyze hydration levels, bowel movements, and hemoglobin levels within the bowl. The position of the camera is pointed down, so Dekoda only monitors what is in the toilet bowl.
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Dekoda is the latest health tech device that passively monitors personal data and turns it into easily viewable health information that a user can address. It also turns everyday activities, like peeing, into a quantifiable data point and score. The app gives users a hydration rating, effectively scoring them on how much water they’ve drunk each day.
The Dekoda latches onto a toilet to monitor urination.
Nina Raemont/ZDNET
A Dekoda user’s data is stored within the app, where they can view how many days they were hydrated, their hydration rating, how many Dekoda sessions they’ve had, whether they had regular bowel movements throughout the week, and which days blood was found in the toilet bowl throughout the month.
The device clamps to the toilet, and its battery runs for around a week unplugged.
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Several members of a household can use Dekoda individually by creating separate accounts on the app and touching the finger authenticator, which connects to each account, before activating the bowl. Kohler said it’s built the device with privacy and end-to-end encryption in mind.
Kohler launched Dekoda under Kohler Health, a new branch of the company, Kohler announced today. Kohler is a 150-year-old bathroom and kitchen appliance company. So why is it venturing into digital health? The company seems to be betting on creating health-tracking devices for the bathroom, a place where so much health-monitoring happens already.
“Kohler Health isn’t just another app or product. It’s a promise. It’s a promise that your home can play a more active role in your well-being, that routines that we sometimes take for granted can reveal valuable insights that truly matter,” CEO David Kohler said at Dekoda’s launch event.
Dekoda isn’t the first toilet sensor. Smart toilets even had a moment at CES 2023, with offerings from Withings and Vivoo.
The question remains: will more people feel comfortable latching a sensor onto their toilet than they do keeping a wearable around their wrist 24/7? And will they pay $599 to monitor this personal information?
