Take a seat, your exam is underway.

Israeli Company Designs Early Detection Device for Colorectal Cancer

If this Israeli start-up company OutSense has its way, those who have colorectal issues that might indicate the presence of cancer will find out faster than ever.

Their device attaches to the toilet bowl and takes pictures of poo. And, yes, AI is part of this as well. It comes from a story on venturebeat.com, written by Paul Sawyers.

Most adults at one time in their lives have had their excretions examined for a variety of reasons. Researchers can learn a lot by analyzing a person’s bodily excretions, including their income, diet and health.

The Israeli startup wants to help prevent life-threatening diseases by passively monitoring human waste, circumventing the need to collect physical samples. And as cute as the little Cologuard dancing box is in their commercials, this seems a little less time-consuming.

OutSense intends to use computer vision to “transform human waste into lifesaving medical insights” through a simple IoT attachment that clips to the side of a standard toilet bowl. Today, the company announced it has raised $2.2 million from Peregrine Ventures, an early-stage VC firm focused on life sciences. The Series A round will allow OutSense to bring the technology closer to the market and further develop what it calls the world’s, “first and largest database of human waste.”

Turning Waste into Data

The OutSense device has a multi-spectral optical sensor, an illumination module, and an autonomous controller with a Wi-Fi receiver. This ensures captured data is automatically transferred to the cloud, where OutSense carries out real-time analysis and delivers insights to a device belonging to the end-user or directly to the health care provider. If OutSense’s system detects any abnormality, it issues notifications to trigger further analysis and treatment.

Seeflection has shared many stories in recent years about the gigantic changes taking place in nearly every single medical field that is directly related to AI. The OutSense device explores a new arena, so to speak. But we are equally excited to see how effective this diagnostic process can be.

read more at venturebeat.com