Withings announcest cleanest looking but dirtiest health gadget ever

Withings, the French company that makes health-related gadgets we used to know as Nokia health, announced a new health scanning gadget U-scan. If you hoped for a watch, you’d be surprised that U stands for urine. Yes, this pebble-shaped device is scanning your urine to find out the level of some valuable metabolites that could point out some health issues.

Withings is aware that our urine has some 3000 metabolites and some of those are biomarkers that can be measured easily to scan our health. The 90 mm U-scan pebble is meant to be placed inside your toilet bowl and it is required from a user to pee on it. Withings is using microfluidics system to gather the urine and store it in small compartments where the sample is taken. Actually, Withings is using specially designed cartridges that are able to monitor just specific parameters, not all of them instantly.

Three available now are:

• U-Scan Cycle Sync aims to relieve women of the mental load that comes with monthly hormonal fluctuations
• U-Scan Nutri Balance aims to make healthy eating a keystone of preventative health by evaluating the impact nutrition and water intake have on our metabolism. Based on the objectives and results, Withings will be offering advice, recipes and activities to users
• U-Scan For Professionals cartridge is an at-home solution that aims to provide access to regular and accurate urinalysis data to healthcare professionals to easily monitor patients and health program participants. This use case will be available following appropriate regulatory clearances.

U-Scan will be launched in the second half of 2023 and the expected price is around 500€.

Is anyone interested in this one? A lot of details are still missing, and I don’t know if this device will be that easy to use or maintain. Also, Withings isn’t offering a complete scan of your urine.  There are plenty of metabolites that can be used as biomarkers and measured to get a picture of your general health condition. If a complete scan could be possible, this device would be more useful than just knowing your Vitamin C levels. Anyways, this is a bold move for Withings!

Find out more about U-Scan at Withings