FDA approval of a smart stethoscope could lead to better outcomes for heart patients.
The stethoscope is one of the oldest medical devices, yet the equipment’s technology hasn’t changed much in centuries. Now a California start-up is using the latest technology to bring stethoscopes into the 21st century.
This week the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared the smart stethoscope made by Eko Technologies for use across the country, according to a CNN story. The device is the first of its kind to connect wirelessly to a smart phone, to allow doctors to record a patient’s heartbeat and transfer it efficiently to a secure app and upload it to the web.
Doctors can chart the heartbeat, allowing them to call up the patient’s record anytime, rather than relying on their memory of what sounds they heard potentially months past. They can also easily send the report to specialists who can assess the reading, so patients won’t need to make another appointment or wait unduly for an evaluation.
Eko also hopes to create software that can analyze heartbeats to aid in diagnosis and treatment. The company is currently conducting trials to test such projects in two San Francisco hospitals, on both adult and child patients. If successful, those trials would enter the FDA clinical process in 2016.
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