Reinventing Stethoscope will revolutionize Access to Healthcare

Technology has affected humankind dramatically especially in last five decades. It has touched almost every facet of our lives making it better, efficient and convenient. The impact of technology in healthcare, education and corporate sector is revolutionary. 

The influence of new techniques and methodologies to ordinary tasks was not sudden, in fact it took a roadway of continuous efforts and innovation to view it as a necessity rather than a luxury.

A wheel was invented thousand years ago on INDUS RIVER, but interestingly, now airplane and spaceships are designed based on that very idea. Similarly, the concept of radio frequency was introduced hundreds of years ago that over the years gave us smart phone, smart watches, magnetic chip that are now considered staple for everyday life. When Radio was invented, the idea was to utilize it for communication and now thousands of TV channels and smart TV are introduced that are expanded on the idea of radio. Abacus was designed to aid in calculations that later became the foundation to build computers, laptops and cloud computing. 

Talking about healthcare, Stethoscope is considered the foremost instrument used by doctors and it was introduced 200 years ago for hearing heart and lungs sounds of patients for better diagnosis. It is worthy to notice that even though stethoscope remains the most important instrument used by doctors everywhere, not much innovation is seen in its functionality. 

eSteth - Smart Stethoscope 

Recently, I came across an organization Tech4Life Enterprises, and was glad to see someone working towards reinventing Stethoscope. They changing it from ordinary stethoscope to Smart Stethoscope. The stethoscope that the Company has deigned not only provides basic functionality of an ordinary stethoscope where physicians & nurses can hear high quality heart and lungs sounds , but they can also record, store , share and live transfer/stream, heart and lungs sounds through any communication software like Skype, WhatsApp or emails.  Not only that, it comes with a dedicated app that can work on both Android and iOS to enable live streaming, and share heart and lungs sounds either via connecting to your computer/laptop or mobile devices, or wireless (Bluetooth) connectivity. Tech4Life Enterprises call this innovation as eSteth. 

eSteth comes in 2 versions:  eSteth Lite and eSteth Pro. eSteth Lite is the affordable model designed to support care providers in primary care and hospital settings, while eSteth Pro is designed to work in professional healthcare settings to improve sound quality for diagnosis.  

Basically, eSteth is definitely game changer as it is giving freedom to healthcare providers to use it as traditional stethoscope for face-t-face consultation, or they can use it for Telemedicine to carry out  Live or store-and-forward consultation allowing users to record, store and share heart and lungs sounds with other providers for second opinion. 

The most noteworthy thing that I found with eSteth’s design is that it looks exactly as a traditional stethoscope with the option to use it wired or wirelessly through Bluetooth connectivity. The same design will certainly makes it more adaptive to be used by health providers. Also, it comes with an audio jack that can connect eSteth to mobile device or computer for transfer and sharing of sounds.

Features	eSteth Lite	eSteth Pro
High Quality Digital sounds	Yes	Yes
100x amplification	Yes	Yes
Long lasting battery	Yes	Yes
Best of remote consultation	Yes	Yes
Noise filtration	Yes	Yes
Bluetooth enabled	No	Yes
Display heart rate and rhythm	NO	Yes
Built-in Memory for sound recording	NO	Yes

eSteth Application 

The mobile application of eSteth allows health providers to connect to eSteth with the smartphone via Bluetooth or audio jack. The application allows management of heart sounds, view heart rhythm, record consultation, and also share sounds with other health providers for second opinion.

Mobile application can also be used both on patient site for referring the sounds, and specialist site for reviewing them. It appeared that Tech4Life Enterprises believes in user friendliness of the app; eSteth app is design in  a way that as soon as app starts it asks users to pair eSteth either through wire or wirelessly making it a very easy to understand process.

Once eSteth is paired, the app take you to the screen with human body where heart and lungs place their stethoscope on the patient’s body at the same positons defined on the app, and press record button. Once recorded, you can share o it with other people using the app and create a chatting thread for further comments and discussion among health providers reviewing a particular case.

BY 

Dodo Khan