At CES 2026, the concept of the “smart home” moved deeper into the most private room of the house. While ViodiTV has previously explored the evolution of “health from the hip” with companies like Olive Diagnostics and the high-tech wellness concepts from Toto, a new player, Throne Science, is looking to make gut health monitoring entirely passive.

In an interview with Scott Hickle, co-founder and CEO of Throne Science, we learned how the company is turning the toilet into a health and wellness device operating under FDA general wellness guidelines.

The Personal Mission Behind the Tech

The drive to quantify “what’s happening inside your body” is more than just a business venture; it is deeply personal. One of Throne’s founders, John Capodilupo (formerly the CTO of WHOOP), suffers from ulcerative colitis. His struggle with managing the uncertainty of a chronic gut condition served as a primary motivator for creating a device that provides objective data on digestive health, moving away from the unreliability of subjective memory or manual food logging.

From Wearable to “Nearable”

Hickle describes the Throne device as a “nearable” rather than a wearable. It is a camera-equipped sensor that clips onto a standard toilet and uses computer vision to analyze waste.

• Passive Tracking: The device tracks gut health, urinary function, and hydration straight from the toilet bowl.
• Computer Vision: It uses a camera to look down and measure urinary flow rate, bathroom habits, and stool quality.
• Identification: The system identifies users via Bluetooth on their phones or through “player one” and “player two” buttons for phone-free use.
• Privacy: The camera only activates when a known user is detected or a button is pushed, respecting guest privacy. The encrypted video is streamed to their cloud for analysis to allow for faster processing and frequent model updates.

Solving the “Doomscrolling” Problem

Interestingly, Throne isn’t just looking at the waste; it’s looking at your behavior. The device tracks your “evacuation window”—how long you actually spend in the process—versus your “wrap-up time,” which is often spent sitting on the toilet “doomscrolling” on a smartphone. Hickle noted that smartphone use on the toilet has been correlated with a 46% increase in hemorrhoid risk. To combat this, the Throne app can send a push notification suggesting it’s time to “stretch your legs” if you’ve been sitting for more than ten minutes.

Connectivity and Cost

The device is designed for a 4-to-6 week battery life and processes data in the cloud to allow for frequent AI model updates.

• Price Point: The hardware is $400, with a $6 per month subscription to cover the cost of cloud processing.
• Analysis: The system allows users to correlate their “inputs” (diet/stress) with “outputs” to see which meals are associated with unhealthy gut health.
• Future Coaching: Throne is also developing an AI gut health coach that uses voice notes to extract dietary data and provide holistic health insights.

Throne launched in February 2026 under FDA general wellness guidelines, with future ambitions to become an FDA-cleared medical device. As Hickle concluded, tens of millions of Americans deal with “mystery” gut health issues that could be better understood by simply paying more attention to the data we usually flush away.

[Note: the above text was directed and edited by the author, but written by Google’s Gemini].