stethoscope

Microsoft gives $75,000 to team building cloud-based stethoscope

Pneumonia, which claims the lives of more than 1.2 million children under the age of 5 every year, is the leading cause of death in children worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. And in certain regions, such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, pneumonia alone accounts for 85 percent of pediatric deaths.

So it comes as little surprise that Microsoft, through its Imagine Cup Grants program, has awarded its second-place prize of $75,000 to a team out of Australia that is developing a tool to diagnose the infection quickly and affordably. (The first-place prize went to a … Read more

A stethoscope app? Be still my beating heart

If you're the kind of person who likes to take scissors to old gadgets, this one's for you. Start-up RidRx is now selling an adapter to connect old stethoscopes to an iPhone or iPod Touch, along with a phone dock/holder and an app that translates the audio your stethoscope captures into such delightful digital accoutrements as sound spectrograms.

And yes, the firm's easy-to-follow instructions include taking trauma shears to your old 'scope to fit it to the patent-pending iStetho Adapter. So the whole process, from tinkering with hardware to taking current heart-rate readings with the iStethoscope … Read more

Bluetooth stethoscope: The better to hear you with

That ubiquitous symbol of the medical profession, the stethoscope, is finally undergoing a 21st century tech makeover. The next time you drop by the doctor's, his acoustic listening implement may well sport Bluetooth connectivity and an LCD panel.

3M Health Care has announced the Littmann Electronic Stethoscope, which packs features most headphone users would be familiar with, such as noise cancellation and greater sound clarity.

With the souped-up hearing, the Littman then transmits lung, heart, and body sounds wirelessly to the bundled Zargis StethAssist program for further analysis, as well as to keep a record on file. Which is … Read more

Stethoscope for the battlefield

The battlefield medic is a staple of war movies, but rarely depicted is one challenge that goes beyond dodging bullets: noise.

U.S. Army acoustical engineers have developed a new stethoscope that can outperform its electronic predecessors by detecting a human heartbeat in intensely noisy environments, such as inside a military helicopter, according to LiveScience. Unlike others before it, the new stethoscope has a special head that can generate ultrasound waves, or sound frequencies that can cancel out external noises as high as 120 decibels.

Background noise on ambulances, helicopters or within crowds typically render electronic and traditional stethoscopes useless. … Read more