CEO Corner: Kohler Health’s Kash Kapadia on the Rise of the Smart Bathroom

Kapadia has been leading Kohler’s groundbreaking digital health venture since 2021. Last fall, the division launched its inaugural product, a smart toilet system that could change wellness and preventive healthcare

The wellness tech category is evolving fast, and Kohler Health CEO Kash Kapadia is confident he’s onto the next big thing.

Last fall, Kohler officially launched Kohler Health as its newest venture, although the digital health division had been in the works for several years before that. 

To spearhead the new venture, Kohler tapped Kapadia, a former software engineer, management consultant and healthcare executive, who’s been leading the Kohler Health team since 2021. 

Kohler Heath’s inaugural product, Dekoda, acts as a smart toilet system that tracks hydration, gut health and other wellness indicators, including traces of blood. Dekoda and its accompanying digital app have already won multiple design awards. 

Retailing for $449 and HSA/FSA eligible, Dekoda’s launch also marked a powerful moment for the fitness and wellness industry, with Kohler, one of the world’s top manufacturing companies, entering the world of wellness tech. 

Now that Dekoda’s been on the market for several months, Kapadia sat down with Athletech News to discuss why he joined Kohler’s digital health division, what’s next for Kohler Health and why he believes the bathroom will become the center of healthcare. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background before joining Kohler Health, and why you decided to come on board and lead this new health vertical?

Kash Kapadia: My background has been in three phases. I started out as a pure engineer in the .com universe — I’m dating myself. I was enjoying leading people, so I went to business school and then went into management consulting, which was the second phase. That was all in New York. When I moved back to (Southern California), I knew I wanted to build things, but I wasn’t going to build pure tech. So I decided I’m going to build businesses, both inside companies and in startups. That’s where I found my calling. I’ve been in it for 15 years now.  I’ve built businesses at HP Enterprise Services and Stanford Health Care, where I was the VP of Digital Health. I then did my own startup, and now I’m at Kohler Health. 

When I first heard about the idea for Kohler Health, it was so intriguing that I couldn’t pass it up. The question was, “How do you make the bathroom the center of healthcare?” When I came in, it was about figuring out the tech we were going to use, the products we were going to build and the team we needed to bring this to market. It was a beautiful canvas to fill. That was four-plus years ago now. 

ATN: Understandably, it took a few years to bring Dekoda from idea to launch. How did you land on a smart toilet system as Kohler Health’s first product? 

KK: We saw an untapped market, both in terms of the bathroom being an untapped room in the house, and also the analysis of waste being an untapped source of insights into your healthcare. So we knew what we wanted to do. 

Kohler is an amazing company: the word “gracious” shows up in its mission statement. So we wanted this experience to be gracious. For us, that meant we didn’t want anyone to have to handle their own waste. Every other solution on the market, up until now, has involved taking a sample, and then you rush to a lab, or you take a sample and rub it on a stick. That’s just not something that you’re going to do every day. 

We use optics and light —actual spectroscopy sensors that analyze wavelength and can detect different substances. That’s the technical angle of it. We also chose a form factor that makes it so anyone can use this. You don’t have to replace your entire toilet or do any major installation. The device is a clamp; it opens very easily but fits in very snugly. It fits most toilets, which gives us the most access to a new market. 

ATN: Who’s your target market with a product like Dekoda?

KK: At this stage, it’s a wellness product; it’s not a diagnostic. So we’re very focused on how we can add value to people’s lives every day. That can take on various forms. It could be somebody who is actively tracking their day-to-day metrics and their biomarkers from other devices, such as the Apple Watch or a sleep ring like Oura. This is another frontier of insights they didn’t have access to, which they now do. What comes out of your body is as important as what you put in it.  

Then there are folks with specific use cases. We started on hydration, gut health and the detection of blood in the toilet bowl. Each of those has value in and of itself. 

ATN: You have a background as a healthcare executive. Do you see opportunities for healthcare integrations with a product like Dekoda?

KK: Increasingly, people come to their physicians with data that they’ve collected elsewhere, and they say, “Help me make sense of this.” So it’s no longer just the lab test and the annual physical. We don’t replace that, but we augment it, and we make that visit and that conversation much richer. 

We have three leading physicians on our clinical advisory board, one of whom leads patient experience as a physician at Stanford Health Care. So we were always saying, “How does this factor into the broader system of care that someone may have?”

ATN: What’s next on Kohler Health’s product roadmap, either inside the bathroom or outside of it? 

KK: We’ve only been on the market for several months, and it’s a first-of-its-kind product. So there’s no roadmap for us to follow. But there’s so much we can do, and we have to be careful that we really listen to our users along the way. For now, there’s a lot to do within the toilet itself.

Beyond that, the entire bathroom is a rich source of insights, and Kohler makes products across the bathroom. So we’re always looking at what is the next thing, in terms of how we expand there and then, eventually, beyond that, into the home.  

ATN: What trends do you expect to see drive the wellness and health tech market over the next several years?

KK: You’re already seeing a lot of this come to the fore, but I think, given the complexities of our healthcare system, it’s about empowering users. That’s a personal passion of mine. How can I really help (people) do the most they can by themselves to lead a healthier life? It isn’t just about that one visit to the physician whenever you feel sick or part of your annual (check-up). 

We have excellent optical sensors integrated very tightly with algorithms, and both of them synergistically figure out, How do we make the most effective outcome possible? As the worlds of sensing and algorithms expand, the way these come together in a physical AI system is something that will absolutely catch on in healthcare, and not just in the home, but also in established provider entities.