Go to any hospital or urgent care center, and draped around the neck of every doctor will be a stethoscope. These devices, used by physicians to listen to the heart and the lungs, were first invented 200 years ago by Frenchman Rene Laennec, and the fundamentals of them haven’t really changed all that much ever since. They’re stuck in the analog ages.
Tried-and-tested tech, certainly. But there’s a lot of room for improvement, thinks Jason Bellet, founder and COO of Eko Devices . There’s no high-tech guiding hand to help clinicians diagnose patients.
“ For the vast majority of clinicians, differentiating between normal and pathologic heart sounds is a major challenge. As many as 80% of internal medicine residents misdiagnose common murmurs with their stethoscope,” he explained.
This shortcoming lead Bellet to imagine how the humble stethescope could be dragged into the 21st century. “We had an idea to build a ‘smart stethoscope’ that would assist clinicians in the decision process.”
From here, the idea for Eko was born. This $300 stethoscope amplifies heart and lung sounds forty-fold, and can make recordings, making it easier for doctors to collaborate. It also includes both a digital and analog mode, allowing doctors to switch between the two as required.
“We set out to build a digital stethoscope that not only amplified sounds (there had been a few out there that did that), but actually make it possible for clinicians to securely record, save, annotate, and share sounds with experts for a second opinion,” Bellet explained.
Once a recording is made, it can be shared with a paired smartphone running iOS or Android, and uploaded to a secure cloud platform.
“Security is important,” Bellet said. “We’ve created a HIPAA-compliant mobile app and web dashboard, and we’ve deployed the same medical-grade encryption and security protocols as electronic health record (EHR) platforms.”
“All patient info, whether recorded by the device or entered into the app is encrypted and stored in Eko’s secure Amazon AWS cloud database.”
So far, there are 3,200 clinicians using Eko to record patient’s heartbeats and lung sounds across an impressive 400 institutions.
It’s used in departments as diverse as pediatrics, cardiology, pulmonology, and chronic-disease management, and the device has been certified by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and Health Canada, and plans to expand into the European Union in 2017.
“It took us eighteen months to get our class 2 device certification from the FDA,” Bellet explained.
“Now that we’ve got the digital stethoscope and software platform cleared, we’re now working on software that’ll let us diagnose conditions using machine learning.” he said. “Think of it as being like ‘Shazam for Heartbeats'”
“T he vision is to be able to characterize for the clinician what it is they’re listening to to take much of the uncertainty out of the equation. Essentially, it would be putting a the ears of a cardiologist in the stethoscope of any clinician.”
I wanted to know how this would work in the real world. Bellet gave the example of a nurse who is listening to a patient, hears a murmur, but is unsure of whether it’s pathologic. He or she could run it against the algorithm and learn that it’s a mid-systolic murmur indicative of aortic stenosis, and is thus pathologic and requires a referral.
He was keen to emphasis that this, despite incredibly cool, is no replacement for the real thing.
“This will be classified as ‘decision support’ and not diagnostic given it still relies on the clinician’s expertise. But the goal is that it improves their sensitivity and specificity for catching and distinguishing difficult heart sounds at the point of care”
Eko Devices plans to roll out its first algorithm to the Eko platform in early 2018. “We’ve built the foundation of our algorithm development and are in the process of expanding our annotated dataset. We’ll then go into a clinical validation phase before submitting to the FDA and CE.”
But don’t expect it any time soon. Validation and approval is a long and arduous process.
LoopPay’s new ChargeCase turns your iPhone into a credit card
Mobile payment startup LoopPay has released ChargeCase , a battery case for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s that includes the firm’s magnetic loop technology for making touchless credit card payments at legacy terminals.
The $99 ChargeCase follows the release of the $39 Fob , which attaches to iPhone and Android devices through the audio jack. For a limited time, if you buy the ChargeCase, you’ll also receive a free Fob. Swiping your credit and loyalty cards through the Fob allows you to save their mag-stripe data to the LoopPay app so you can use the cards at retailers.
LoopPay’s technology generates a tiny magnetic field that you can hold above a credit card terminal to simulate the act of swiping a card.
The ChargeCase battery holds about 60 percent of an iPhone charge. That’s not enough to get me through a full day of heavy use, but it’s enough of a reserve so that I don’t get anxious if my battery is running low and I need some juice until I can get to an outlet. Im not too keen on how the ChargeCase looks, especially the giant Loop logo on the back.
While I’m a fan of what LoopPay is trying to accomplish, the extra bulk of the case isn’t quite worth the added convenience of not carrying your credit cards. However, if you’re already in the market for a battery-equipped case and the mobile payment angle is an added bonus, then the ChargeCase might be for you.
For my part, I’m not quite ready to ditch my wallet and go all-in with LoopPay. The real promise of LoopPay will arrive if it’s built into phones. That way, we’ll have the option of storing cards we don’t want to carry around, but we won’t be forced into doubling the bulk and weight of our phones.
➤ LoopPay ChargeCase
Sony unveils a virtual reality device for the PlayStation 4, ‘Project Morpheus’
At the Game Developers Conference today, Sony took the wraps off a virtual reality device for the PlayStation 4, codenamed ‘Project Morpheus’. The immersive headset creates “presence” via sight, sound, tracking, control, ease of use, and content, Sony says.
Shuhei Yoshida, the head of PlayStation’s videogame software division, explains Sony’s rationale for the headset: “I have long dreamed about VR and the possibilities it brings in regards to game development. This new technology will deliver a sense of presence, where you as the player actually feel like you’re inside the game and your emotions feel that much more real.”
Yoshida says Sony has worked for over three years on developing the VR headset. The current prototype for Project Morpheus features a head-mounted display with 1080p resolution and a 90 degree field of view. There are a ccelerometer and gyroscope sensors built into the unit, while the PlayStation Camera tracks head orientation and movement, so this means that as your head rotates, the image of the virtual world rotates too in real-time. Project Morpheus also features 3D audio technology that provides stereoscopic sounds in all directions in real-time depending on the head orientation.
Other than PlayStation Camera, Project Morpheus also works with DUALSHOCK 4 Wireless Controller and PlayStation Move.
Project Morpheus still isn’t a final product — it’s a work-in-progress so users may not get their hands on it till some time further down the road. The company, however, declined to give a possible timeline of when the headset will be launched or how much it would cost. Sony will begin demonstrating the headset at GDC and gather feedback from developers. Some Project Morpheus VR demos at GDC include The Deep, The Castle, EVE Valkyrie and Thief.
Virtual reality in gaming has been cool again thanks to Oculus Rift — and it’s little wonder that game console makers also want a slice of the pie to make gaming even more immersive.
Images via Sony, headline image via Getty Images