Withings U-Scan putting the P in TCP/IP
Internet connected urinalysis is coming to a toilet and connected device near you. Urine for it.
We’re moving more and more to the point where lab visits are no longer required and your devices can tell you to lay off the candy. We’re not quite there yet but it’s an interesting little device and getting a little snapshot into your health isn’t a bad thing.
I don’t do PR for most products I don’t test, and I’m not endorsing this until I see it in action. I’m entirely here to post pee jokes until Withings creates a log reader. Getting a kick that it’s also called U-Scan, which is the same name as a self checkout at a grocery store near me which I’ll never look at the same.
Important to note that the U-Scan does not advertise itself as a medical device. It can return specific gravity for water balance, pH for protein-vegetable balance, Ketones for energy metabolism, vitamin c levels, and with another cartridge it can track Luteinizing Hormone for cycle and ovulation window determination. It’s some interesting things to metric, but I feel this has mostly been done by other less expensive medical devices.
Coming in at €499.95 (about $540 USD,) and $30 a month in cartridges, it’s something that you’re going to have to build a real use case for unless I’m missing something (I might be.)
It looks like from a simple internet search you can get Keto test strips at about 100 for $11, Vit C test strips 50 for $20, Protein strips 100 for $8, and Luteinizing Hormone test strips 70 for $15. I mean, I’m not backing any of these or claiming they’re awesome, just price comparison shopping and trying to figure out the cost/benefit of not having to manually enter something in a database.
I seriously thought by this point in the article I’d have at least ten urine jokes but nope.
I hope I’m missing something here… just doesn’t seem particularly cost effective or adding much beyond the ability to mostly forget about tracking manually.
You can see the Withings U-Scan product page here.
