Monitoring hearts at home with an innovative toilet seat

Healthcare is changing.

Tracking and monitoring devices, like wearable technologies and patient monitoring systems, are enhancing healthcare by providing continuous real-time data collection, early detection of health issues, and improved management of chronic diseases – such as diabetes or heart disease.

These devices help medical professionals to make timely interventions, develop personalized treatment plans, and improve overall patient outcomes.

German company Hamberger Medical, part of the wider Hamberger Group, has now introduced a new smart product that can precisely detect atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, characterized by rapid and irregular heartbeats).

It’s estimated that around 2.5% of the world’s population are affected by atrial fibrillation, which significantly increases the risk of stroke due to blood clots forming in the heart and traveling to the brain. It also elevates the risk of heart failure and other heart-related complications.

Their new product aims to save lives, but it is based on common, everyday household object – the humble toilet seat.

Images credit: Hamberger Medical

An easy-to-use technology

The Hamberger Medical team was formed by a combination of experts with very different backgrounds. Hamberger Sanitary is Europe’s largest producer of toilet seats, and medical technology insight came via a collaboration with doctors and the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS). The team also worked with external App developers, electronics manufacturers, and many other skilled experts.

Through close collaboration with doctors and other healthcare professionals, the novel toilet seat was developed to give simple and highly precise monitoring of someone’s vital cardiac parameters. The seat can record a six-channel ECG (electrocardiogram) that monitors the electrical activity of a heart, thanks to its advanced algorithms and innovative technology – which includes four Saft 3.6V lithium cells (LS14500).

An associated app provides easy-to-understand data, and it automatically generates an ECG report that can be forwarded to a doctor.

Markus Richter, Head of Development at Hamberger Medical, explains where the idea for an ECG toilet seat first came from.

“We’d had earlier developments in the smart home sector, and we saw an opportunity to build another mainstay for the medical with the toilet seat because it is an everyday object that people already have in their homes. It’s perfect for measuring vital signs, since it’s part of someone’s daily routine, in a calm state, and with skin contact. But it was still a big challenge for our research and development teams to get the product to where it is now.”

First, a usability study confirmed that older people can safely use the seat and the app without any problems (with the oldest participant being 91 years old), before a clinical approval study was conducted.

The Hamberger Heart Study confirmed the high clinical performance of the new ECG system. Not only was it comparable to the existing gold standard, but it also offered additional advantages in terms of handling and usability for the patient.

The ECG seat is now available via their online store, and the Hamberger Medical Team is in talks with various healthcare providers and insurance companies.

The plan is to integrate further vital parameters into toilet seats, for example, to allow people to also measure their blood pressure. It is also possible that the seat could incorporate other non-invasive measures of blood sugar levels or oxygen saturation, opening up the benefits for a wider range of health conditions.