According to Dottocomu, Hitachi, a consortium of Japanese companies are working on a system of wirelessly networked devices that monitor your health and detect any problems as you go about your daily business.

– Hitachi is making a mat that slides under your futon and measures pulse, breathing, and snoring while you’re asleep;
– Matsushita is working on a device that allows the “easy measurement of the thickness of flab on your stomach and other areas”,
– Toto will bring out a toilet that measures salt and sugar levels in your urine as you piss;
– Mitsubishi works on a system that analyses the data while Fujitsu Prime Software Technologies contributes the communication format that will link everything up. These should start appearing on the market around 2006.

For those who are passionate about toilets, I came upon the website of The American Sanitary Plumbing Museum this morning.