The medical professional wearing a stethoscope is a familiar image, but Northwestern University wants to change that. Instead of someone hanging an ancient device around their neck to listen inside of you, they want to put sticky sensors on patients to continuously monitor sounds from hearts, lungs, and the GI tract.
The tiny devices stick to your skin and wirelessly beam audio to clinicians for analysis. They’ve tested the devices on people ranging from people with chronic lung disease to premature babies. In fact, you can hear breath sounds (and crying) from a microphone attached to a baby in the video below. The device uses noise suppression to remove the crying sounds effectively.
The 40 mm by 20 mm by 8 mm devices contain flash memory, batteries, Bluetooth, and two tiny microphones. As you might guess, one microphone faces the patient, and the other one faces away to capture noise for cancellation.
Collecting sound from multiple points continuously could be a game changer. We can only guess what the device will cost, but keep in mind that creating it to medical standards and pushing it through certification means it probably won’t be as inexpensive as you’d think just from the bill of materials.
Still, we have a feeling we will see more of these in the years to come in hospitals, clinics, and maybe even doctor’s offices. We have seen smart noise-canceling stethoscopes before. If you are satisfied with the old-fashioned kind, why not 3D print one?
Considering how many doctors trust mercury based BP instruments more than the convenient electronic ones, I trust the general public will be able to reap this technology’s benefits very soon!
2100s soon.
The electronic ones can be of dubious accuracy and, while the manual ones are subject to human error, an experienced user can do the job at least as well in less time while also noticing things like irregular pulses.
I haven’t been to a huge range of doctors but the electronic ones I’ve seen are usually the basic models that definitely have a pretty terrible (5-15%) repeatability.
I’ve worked for 15 years in both inpatient and outpatient cardiology. The automated BP machines beep and look more sophisticated, but have fundamental flaws to the extent that they kill people: For a small proportion of people with an “auscultatory gap” they dramatically underestimate BP. I pick up one or two a year, and these folks have generally been walking around with sky-high blood pressures for years and some have permanent end-organ damage.
As well, checking a BP manually allows you to notice findings like a “paradoxical pulse” or “pulsus alternans” that can be signs of serious problems. And while checking BP you can often pick up conditions like atrial arrhythmias or frequent premature ventricular contractions that can be dangerous. Automated devices are generally blind to all this.
Think carefully before assuming that “it’s digital, so it must be better than the old way.” About anything.
Is this the reason it’s best to do a quick check with the radial pulse as you are releasing the pressure of the cuff? When I would do this it would confuse people.
It’s traditionally taught to take the pulse during cuff inflation, to see when the pulse extinguishes so you know the cuff pressure is high enough.
The actual BP measurement then takes both hands, though – one on the needle valve and one on the stethoscope.
Pulsus paradoxus and the other findings are done while listening.
When I feel strange and I have irregular heartbeat the Omron BP throws error message and it can’t measure it…
We can already effectively monitor cardiac and respiratory function. It’s a cool concept, but there needs to be a study showing whether continuous audio monitoring actually improves patient outcomes.
In the recording you hear a lot of crackles. Those could be from the patient moving and the sensor rubbing against the sheets or it could be pneumonia. Not something you want to make a mistake on.
That “ancient device” is conveniently independent from any energy source, does not fail easily and can be repaired with very basic knowledge, and is cheap to manufacture. Electronic stethoscope won´t replace “ancient” stethoscope anytime soon.
I would classify the hand pumping the rubber bulb as an “energy source”
You proud of yourself for that one? How does that change anything? It’s extremely obvious they’re saying you don’t need to rely on electricity. If you’re there while using it this is a completely moot point.
What part of “independent of _any_ energy source”?
Comment sections are not where you should be applying literals like this and you know it. Use your brain come on. Yea humans are energy sources. Here’s your gold star.
Functionally, it’s independent or offers exactly the same performance as one with a thermodynamics violating source; if the operator isn’t there, a reading isn’t being taken anyway.
Excellent idea. Ambient noise cancelling, wireless. Can be used for monitoring for extended periods, including monitoring remotely by AI.
And it’s almost certainly going to be marketed as a consumable. Medical device companies will love it.
Been there. Done that. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-of-Wearable-BioStampRC-a-Top-view-of-BioStampRC-b-Bottom-view-of_fig1_339531975 ECG/EMG, 3-Axis accelerometer, 3-Axis Gyro and BLE to retrieve the data.
On the hardware side, battery life and skin adhesive are challenges. On the regulatory side, 510(k) certification is not a trivial process.
I wonder how long before it’ll be commercialised and the advertisers will be getting their hands on the audio data.
More like the insurance companies…….
They should probably integrate some MEMS sensors to filter out sounds related to bodily movement or external objects coming in contact with the sensor. Despite the skepticism on display here, this could help with some hospital patients. However, I think the disposable/battery angle is going to limit it’s use which means a simple wired version is more likely to be adopted.
A cartoon in Playboy magazine, probably about 50 years ago, suggested a stereo stethoscope. It seems like an obvious improvement to me, but it’s never been popularized.
I am not sure how patients would feel about more stickers being stuck them when they already get peeved about having to have peripheral IV dressing and telemetry stickers stuck to them for the entire duration of their hospitalization. This is in addition to telling patients that they will have to have at least one microphone stuck to them which they cannot control/know when it is turned on.
As a medium furry old guy, self adhesive medical products are not good things!
Here Here!!! I’ve did not relish the heart rate monitoring pads being stuck to me either.. pulling them off feels much like a waxing would, not fun!. even with adhesive remover wipes, it is still uncomfortable.
and the other torture device, the electronic iv drip pumps… just as you are about to fall asleep the go off.. or just sound because they are defective… :(
Some sticker discomfort seems well worth the price of life saving telemetry.
I’m not convinced that it is a marked improvement over a conventional stethoscope. Last time I got an EKG, I was scratching like a dog with fleas for 2 weeks afterwards.
“dog with fleas”
A little ivermectin will fix that….AND cure COVID. :)
If needed….. /s
You might have an allergy to the adhesive or something if you are having that bad of a reaction. “wipes” to remove stuff seem like too little too late if you’re talking about the pulling them off your skin part. Blast of liquid isopropyl seems to turn most of them to goo. Or conditioner if you have the luxury of removing in the shower.
Hope it works out better for you next time mate.
The really commercial technology they have here is the ability to remove crying babies while leaving other sound. If they can make that into like a patch you could apply directly to children they would make billions!
All the wearable tech in the world is useless if it’s feeding a broken system.
It’s worth recounting a recent encounter with similar, common, wearable technology. I recently had to wear a Holter Monitor (a portable, data-linked EKG) and after having a tech stick it onto me I went happily home…only to find that it keep throwing a fault indication. After fooling with it a bit, I finally went back into the cardiac wing and asked the tech about it. Her response was telling:
“They never trained us on those – the sales guy just left us with a big box of them and took off.”
So we both sat down and looked through the online instructions/documentation to find that it hadn’t been applied or initiated correctly and nobody in the whole operation had any idea.