Design consideration of a health-information-technology-supported intelligent urinalysis system

Urinalysis is not only widely employed in medical diagnosis but also suitable for household daily monitoring of personal health conditions. However, current urinalysis methods and instruments require more professional knowledge, while the sampling and treatment of urine samples are manual and inconvenient. In this work, a new-concept automatic urinalysis system is proposed to provide personal urinalysis services for home users. The system forms an eco-friendly intelligent toilet, which is of great significances in the future healthcare network. The basic strategy is to design a fixed supporting platform and various disposable urinalysis lab-on-chips with great expansibility and high flexibility. The intelligent device has multiple functions of automatic urine sampling, rapid on-chip detecting, auto-decontaminating and personalized health information technology (HIT) supporting, thus to provide a low-cost solution of automatic urinalysis services for both inpatients in hospitals and home-users. The structure of the urinalysis system logically resembles the frame with fixed smart cellphones and various mobile application programs. Besides, a biological lighting module is also designed to harvest the energy in wasted urine by continuous culturing vibrio fischeri, a luminescent bacterium. The integrated urinalysis system could create the possibility of remote medical services for home users, and meanwhile generates a new branch in the field of microsystem, which is entitled as 'HIT-oriented lab-on-chips'.