Steth IO turns your iPhone into a professional stethoscope

Smartphones have become an essential tool for healthcare professionals thanks to the available applications or the magnificent video or photographic cameras that they incorporate. A tool that we always carry in our pocket ready to use, just what we need.

But now we can also use it as a stethoscope, that tool that we all wear around our necks and that we can now keep in our pockets. Steth IO has managed to turn the iPhone into a professional stethoscope, also taking advantage of artificial intelligence and the power of the device to offer functions previously unheard of with conventional stethoscopes.

The rebirth of the stethoscope

The arrival of new technologies in medicine makes older technologies fall into disuse, and stethoscopes are no exception. Recent studies ensure that even the best specialists in identifying heart murmurs, cardiologists, have a failure rate of 35 to 50%. Echocardiography has become the gold standard, but it is much less accessible than a stethoscope, hence the importance of the latter.

Steh IO wants to help solve this problem and for this it resorts to new technologies and the power of the iPhone so that, together with artificial intelligence and machine learning it manages to help doctors in exploring your patients.

Elegant, simple and surprising

The idea could not be more ingenious and simple at the same time: a case that is placed on your iPhone and that incorporates a membrane like the one found in any stethoscope that collect the sounds of the heart or the respiratory tree to take them to the microphone of your iPhone, which captures, analyzes and displays them on the screen. They usually say that a picture is worth a thousand words, because that can be equated to any sound, although it is not worth more, but the visual information that we have on the screen is added to what we hear.

The cover is flexible, very easy to put on and take off, so you can perfectly use it only when you work, to remove it in a few seconds and place a different cover. More than anything because it does not damage the membrane that captures the sound, not so much because it is bulky. In addition, the part of the membrane is metallic. It is currently available for models ranging from the iPhone 6 to the iPhone X, and by the end of the year it will be available for the iPhone XS, XR and XS Max.

The case allows you to use your iPhone normally, since like any conventional case it leaves the speaker and the Lightning connector free for you to recharge your iPhone, and you have access to the on, off, volume buttons and the vibrator switch . The camera slit is not missing so you can use it. Its protective function too very important, something absolutely necessary because if you are going to use your iPhone as a work tool, the chances of it falling are greater.

Cardiac and pulmonary auscultation

The usefulness of the stethoscope is to listen to the internal noises of our patients, and although it has more possibilities, we can summarize that the heart and lungs are generally the main targets. Therefore Steth IO is prepared for these two tasks. To collect the sound, analyze it and display it on the screen we have to use the free Steth IO application (link) and it has these two options through two shortcuts on the screen with which we can easily switch from one to the other.

And how do we hear these sounds? As previously indicated, the information on the screen is an addition to the sounds that we must perceive during auscultation. In order to listen to the sounds that our iPhone captures we can use any Bluetooth headset, like the Sony included. We also have the advantage that these sounds are saved so that we can listen to them over and over again if we still have doubts.

This is the graph that the application shows us in a cardiac auscultation. In it we can see the central graph in which we see the heart sounds and that the app automatically identifies as S1 and S2. Depending on the intensity of the sound, the graph will be higher or lower, and we can also identify the times of systole and diastole (the latter longer), something that sometimes due to tachycardia is difficult to achieve with a simple auscultation.

At the bottom of the screen the frequency of the sounds is represented. Those with higher frequencies generate a higher image, those with low frequencies, lower. Color represents the amplitude or intensity of sound, the strongest being redder. This is very useful to identify heart murmurs in which the frequency of the sound is important to know the origin of the sound.

Artificial intelligence

The images we get are very useful when added to the sounds we have captured, but Steth IO does not stop here, it also uses Artificial Intelligence (AI). With the latest update you have released for your application, when exploring a patient data, always anonymous and encrypted, they are sent to the company's servers, where they are analyzed and a diagnostic approach (normal or murmur) is returned. Obviously, it will be the doctor who must corroborate this statement, and may also confirm or not that first diagnosis to the server, who will learn and improve its reliability.

Editor's opinion

Bringing back the auscultation technique for doctors at a time when new technologies appear daily seemed impossible, but Steth IO may have achieved it with a really simple idea but one that has enormous potential. A simple sheath with a stethoscope membrane and what until now was a subjective test and highly dependent on the skills of the doctor becomes something much more objective and powered by artificial intelligence and "Machine Learning". Of course it is a device approved by the FDA for medical use. The only problem that I find with this accessory is that when changing iPhone you will have to change Steth IO. Its price is $ 229 whatever the iPhone model you have, and remember that a Sony Bluetooth headset is included with your order. At the moment only shipments are made to the United States, but are awaiting certification by the European Union and at the beginning of 2019 they are expected to be available also in Spain and other countries of the union. All the information and orders can be made on the website of Steth I.O..