Kohler Dekoda turns your toilet into a $600 health monitor
Kohler Health has decided your toilet deserves a promotion. The company has launched Dekoda, a $600 clip-on device that uses optical sensors and machine learning to inspect your waste, track hydration, monitor gut health and flag traces of blood.
It fits on standard toilet bowls and connects to the Kohler Health app, turning your bathroom into a low-key health lab with daily updates on how your body’s doing – based entirely on what you leave behind.
This comes just as Withings finally made its U-Scan urine analysis system available in both the US and Europe, underscoring a wider push to bring health monitoring into the bathroom. While U-Scan focuses on urine chemistry using test cartridges, Dekoda takes a very different approach, using cameras and spectroscopy to analyse both urine and stool. Kohler is pitching it as a non-invasive way to capture meaningful health signals without changing your routine.
What the Dekoda tracks
Dekoda watches what enters the toilet bowl, using optical sensors and machine learning algorithms to interpret what it sees. The company says it can track hydration levels, bowel movement consistency, and the presence of blood in the waste. The aim is not to diagnose conditions, but to provide early indications of changes that might warrant attention. For hydration, it looks at the colour and composition of urine. For gut health, it analyses stool shape, frequency, and texture.
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There’s also trend tracking over time. The system builds a baseline for each individual, then flags changes from that baseline rather than relying on generic standards. Kohler suggests this can help users spot patterns tied to hydration, digestion, or even early signs of inflammation.
This type of personalised trend tracking is something users of wearables will be familiar with. But instead of heart rate or sleep, the Dekoda is looking at what you leave behind in the toilet bowl. It’s a shift from biometrics to bio-output.
How the system works
The hardware clips onto the rim of most standard toilets and includes a downward-facing optical sensor, LED lights and a spectroscopy setup. This points into the bowl, not at the person, so privacy concerns are addressed on a hardware level. A separate fingerprint scanner mounted on the wall helps identify which user is on the toilet. That biometric ID links the waste data to the right profile in the app.
After each use, the captured data is sent via Wi-Fi to the Kohler Health app. The app shows hydration trends, gut health insights, and alerts if blood is detected. All data is encrypted end-to-end and Kohler says privacy was a priority during development.
The system won’t work well on dark-coloured toilet bowls, which may affect light reflection needed by the sensor. Kohler also says it’s not designed to replace lab testing, just to support everyday awareness.
Broader implications
The Dekoda points to an emerging category of health tech that moves beyond the wrist. Wearables do a decent job tracking cardiovascular signals, movement and sleep. But they don’t see what comes out of the body. Toilet-based sensors could help fill that gap, offering a complementary layer of data that wearables can’t capture.
Whether users are ready for a smart toilet attachment that watches their waste is another question. But the launch of both U-Scan and Dekoda suggests companies are betting on a future where the bathroom becomes a key node in home health tracking.
The device Kohler Dekoda is priced at $599 on the company’s website. In addition to the one-off hardware cost, there is a subscription required for the companion Kohler Health app: the single‑user plan is US $6.99 per month, or US $70 per year.
Plenty of jokes write themselves with a device like this. Still, if Dekoda delivers on what it promises, it could be surprisingly useful. They say you are what you eat, and now your toilet has the receipts. It’s just a shame the price tag isn’t a little easier to digest.
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