Smart Stethoscope Checks Your Lungs At Home For A Quicker Diagnosis

Suppose you need to be tested for pneumonia, asthma, or just about any other disease that stems from the lungs. In that case, you will have to have a doctor listen in to your lungs through a stethoscope to hear any irregularities in their movement. A diagnosis can then be made from the collected data.
 
However, with more than 2.5 million people dying from pneumonia worldwide yearly, early diagnosis and proper management of different ailments are essential in battling respiratory illnesses.
 
A group of doctors from the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Terre des hommes have come together as part of a research group in 2018 to find a way for doctors to make a more efficient diagnosis. And from this came the Pneumoscope, a smart digital stethoscope that can provide conclusions based on auscultation of the lungs.

 
The device combines a stethoscope, oximeter, and thermometer into one. When in use, a patient or a nurse can place the circular gadget onto the chest or back, and let it listen to the person’s breathing. Once it has collected its data, it will send the results into a user-friendly interface that can be accessed via smartphones or tablets. It can also be turned upside down to be used as a thermometer, or a finger can be placed on top of it to read blood oxygen levels.

Next, an artificial intelligence system will examine the data, provide a diagnosis, and evaluate the risk to the patient.
 
EPFL trained this program on 100,000 different lung sounds from adults and children that suffered from pneumonia, asthma, COVID-19, tuberculosis, bronchiolitis, and more.
 
The idea for the project was spurred on by the recent pandemic, which displayed a great need for non-medical staff and citizens to be able to self-test during a time when it was hard for people to leave their homes to see doctors. According to swisstech, the product is in its final stages of clinical validation before it is ready to head to market.
 
 
 
[via swisstech and Pneumoscope, screenshot via Pneumoscope]