CHICAGO, April 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cylinder Health, the virtual digestive health center of excellence, today announced Stool Scan, an enhancement to stool tracking that makes one of digestive care’s most subjective clinical signals objective, accurate, and easier for patients to capture. Stool Scan revolutionizes how clinicians identify early digestive risk, understand changes over time, and make more informed care decisions across large populations.
Digestive conditions are a leading driver of health care utilization and cost, yet many early warning signs remain subjective, inconsistently reported, and difficult for non-clinical individuals to describe accurately. Existing tools rely on patients to interpret and categorize their own stool patterns, introducing guesswork, variability, and cognitive burden into an already sensitive symptom. As a result, clinicians often receive incomplete or delayed information, limiting their ability to recognize meaningful patterns early and intervene before symptoms escalate.
Stool Scan addresses this gap by converting a simple smartphone image into image based, privacy protected stool insights with greater depth than traditional self-reporting alone, improving signal quality while integrating seamlessly into clinician-led care without adding friction for members or requiring specialized hardware.
“We know that stool patterns can offer meaningful insight into digestive health, but they’ve been difficult to capture and evaluate consistently outside of research settings,” said Dr. Hau Liu, Chief Medical Officer at Cylinder Health.
“What’s exciting about this approach is that it enables a reliable, scalable capture of this critical data element into real-world care. Standardizing stool imagery creates a foundation for longitudinal monitoring and future research into how certain visual findings may contribute to clinical care — something that has historically relied on delayed or inconsistent self-reporting.”
“From a gastroenterologist’s perspective, stool patterns are one of the most important early signals we have, but they are also some of the hardest data to use consistently,” said Dr. Amit Ahuja, Head of Gastroenterology at Cylinder Health. “Having access to a large, well-structured repository of stool images and associated clinical data allows us to recognize meaningful patterns earlier, triage more appropriately, and intervene before symptoms escalate into flares or emergency care.”
Fully integrated into Cylinder’s existing care experience, Stool Scan is available to all members at no additional cost.
Removing guesswork from one of digestive care’s most subjective signals
Stool Scan applies validated image recognition to transform stool images into clinician ready summaries that can be reviewed consistently. The technology is trained on more than 500,000 images, including expertly annotated clinical samples, and has been evaluated against expert clinical standards. The model is continuously refined through clinician review and real-world use, with performance evaluated against expert annotation.
Historically, stool assessment in routine care has been univariate, episodic, and dependent on patient recall. Stool Scan captures multiple visual features simultaneously and evaluates them against expert clinical annotation. By combining objective image analysis with longitudinal tracking inside clinician-led care, Stool Scan introduces a new class of GI signal, one that is more accurate, more informative, and better suited for early intervention than traditional self-reporting alone.
Advanced analytics organize stool image data into standardized summaries for clinician review, while all care decisions remain clinician led.
Designed for real world use, privacy, and scale
Unlike hardware dependent or bathroom installed solutions, Cylinder’s image-based approach is designed for flexibility, privacy, and scalability.
- Works with any smartphone.
- Use it anywhere: home, work, or on the go.
- No subscription hardware or physical devices.
- Patient controlled, point-in-time capture.
- Privacy protected by design.
Nothing is passively collected. Members choose when and if to capture images, preserving control, dignity, and trust whether they are at home, at work, or traveling.
Last year, Cylinder acquired Dieta Health, the company that originally developed and clinically validated the stool imaging technology.
"As an IBS patient, I experienced firsthand how subjective stool tracking made it harder to measure my condition and get the right diagnosis and treatment," said Asaf Kraus, Founder and Former CEO of Dieta Health. "That's why we built this, to make stool data objective, multi-variate, and clinically useful. Now that we’re a part of Cylinder, we plan on continuing to build beyond single-image analysis to track trends over time, contribute to accelerating diagnosis, and improving outcomes faster at scale.”
Benefits across the care ecosystem
- Members receive instant stool insights that complement symptom and food tracking, providing biofeedback that reinforces when behaviors are working and helps surface patterns earlier.
- Clinicians gain standardized inputs that reduce variability, support IBS subtyping, and improve visibility into emerging digestive patterns.
- Employers and health plans benefit from improved signal quality and timelier intervention, supporting fewer flare driven emergency department visits and lower downstream GI costs, without additional infrastructure investment.
The launch of Stool Scan reinforces Cylinder’s commitment to delivering the most effective digestive care. Cylinder has already helped over 145,000 people nationwide and delivers up to a 5:1 ROI, 18% fewer employee sick days, and significant reductions in unnecessary utilization across GI populations.
Read the full story behind Stool Scan Asaf Kraus, founder of Dieta Health, shares why he built this and what it means for the future of GI care. Read the blog post.
About Cylinder Health
Cylinder Health helps employers and health plans manage rising digestive health costs, a major but often overlooked spend category. By giving members experiencing GI symptoms convenient access to appropriate care earlier, Cylinder reduces avoidable ED visits, unnecessary specialist care, and time away from work.
Care is delivered through virtual-first access to a multidisciplinary clinical team that supports digestive, nutrition, and behavioral health needs. Results are measured using validated clinical, economic, and patient experience metrics, delivering industry-leading ROI for leading, large employers nationwide, with HITRUST Level 2 certification and SOC 2 compliance to protect every member’s data.
Media Contact:
Kati Nortrup
VP, B2B Marketing
Cylinder Health
knortrup@cylinderhealth.com
