Smart Stethoscope Gets FDA Stamp of Approval

The normal stethoscope now is getting a high tech upgrade known as the smart stethoscope. The only difference between the old and the new stethoscope is that it has a device attached called the Eko. A recording is set up on the smartphone, then the patient’s heart sounds are amplified and recorded and that patient’s health record is stored.

The significance of this stethoscope is that recordings can be directly sent to the cardiologist instead of physically sending the patient to the cardiologist. Thus, the patients would not have to wait to see the cardiologists to know the results.

The Eko Core, a small adapter like device, is inserted into the tubing of a regular stethoscope - between the earpiece and chest piece. Then, the heartbeats are recorded and routed to the phone through Bluetooth the audio data via Eko’s smartphone application and web portal and is sent up to the cloud, where a specialist can then listen to the audio data by pulling it down.

This device has now got the FDA approval and the announcement was made by Eko devices that their product can make regular stethoscopes into smart ones.

The CEO and Cofounder Connor Landgraf stated “This investment round and upcoming UCSF study is a momentous step towards a new age in stethoscope intelligence and cardiac monitoring”

According to 23 year old Eko Devices co founder Jason Bellet it is the first time the old and new medical tools are being combined. They can track a person’s heartbeats from childhood to maturity.

Bellet acknowledges that Eko is not the first smart stethoscope in the market, but it is definitely the first to connect to a smartphone and wirelessly transfer a heart recording. Even though most of the medical field has gone digital, this has been a slow change for the 200 year old stethoscope.

Mayo Clinic’s Dr Charanjit S Rihal says medical science has been stuck in the analog world. Even if doctors are good at examining patients they are not able to remember the patient’s heart sounds, maybe a year later.
Getting a product approved by FDA is a very costly and time consuming process. That’s why raising an investment for this was crucial. This brought Eko to the demo stage in 2014. They face some very tough questions but finally succeeded in getting the money. Eko has received funding worth $2.8 million, which is only the start of its cardiovascular innovations.

Rihal, who joined Eko as an advisor believed that if engineers could examine the sounds using algorithms then that would have real value.

Eko is conducting trials in two hospitals in San Francisco to gather heartbeat data from 200 children and 200 adults. The data collected would then be analyzed and tested to help them develop a heartbeat functionality that Eko is building. It will go through separate testing by FDA, which would take place in early 2016.
Eko CTO Tyler Crouch says they are trying to create the Shazam for heartbeats.