Doctors
and Nurses in Jamaica, get ready to buy the latest gadget that can actually help
you become a cardiologist overnight!
Eko Devices is a company that has developed an
attachment to the familiar stethoscope called the Eko Core
that will take this analog listening device into the Digital age as stated in
the article “Eko
Devices' smart stethoscope could eliminate unnecessary cardiologist referrals”,
published September 15, 2014 5:20 PM by Mark Sullivan, Venturebeat.
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The
US$199 Eko Core is an attachment that
fits in-between the stethoscope’s earpiece and chest attachment. It listens to
the heartbeat and re-transmits the sound it hears to an Apple iPhone or Apple
iPad via Bluetooth LE.
The
Eko Core then uploads the data
via the Internet to a server run by Eko
Devices that analyzes and compares the heartbeat against a known database
of heartbeats and returns an accurate diagnosis of the patient.
This
last part reminds me of another product, called the US$199 SCiO Portable IR
Spectrometer that's made by Consumer Physics
that analyzes the chemical composition of anything it scans as noted in
my blog article
entitled “Consumer
Physics US$199 SCiO Portable IR Spectrometer – Star Trek Tricorder that can
scan the Molecular World”.
So
how did Eko Devices get the idea for US$199
Eko Core?
And
can this attachment make a difference in healthcare or is it just another
gadget for doctors, like Google Glass as noted in my blog article entitled
“Google
Glass with Intel Chips - US$199 Google Glass Plus coming as Intel Core M 14nm
Processor shrinks Battery for US Army and Medical Doctor Demand”.
US$199 Eko Core Stethoscope
attachment – Doctors don’t trust their own hearing in diagnosing Heart disease
Dr
Connor Landgraf, founder and CEO of Eko
Devices, came up with the idea while he was still in graduate school for
biomedical engineering. By chance, a professor introduced Connor Landgraf and
his two (2) other co-founders, fellow undergraduates Jason Bellet and Tyler
Crouch to a panel off six (6) physicians who expressed interest in their
product.
The
stethoscope stood out in those discussions and is usually the obvious
identifying mark of a doctor. In many cases, it’s the first tool that he
reaches for when diagnosing a patient.
However,
many doctors and nurses aren’t trained cardiologists as argued in the article “Futuristic
Stethoscope Attachment To Go Into Clinical Trials”, published 3/12/2015 by
Sarah Hedgecock, Forbes.
With
the US$199 Eko Core, the possibility exists
to turn these health care professionals and even regular folk at home who have
a stethoscope into doctors, to quote Dr.
John Chorba, who’s involved in a clinical trial where the Eko Core accuracy is being
compared against EKG (Electro Cardiograph) readings: “What’s really exciting is it has the potential to make
internists and nurse practitioners and other types of providers into
cardiologists”.
US$199 Eko Core Stethoscope
attachment – IoT meets Big Data to turn Doctors and Nurses into Cardiologists
The Eko
Core, being the latest in the trend of IoT (Internet of Things) to final come
to the Medical Profession, can also be used gather the heart signatures of
millions of heart patients from across the world and allows for Cloud Servers
to analyze this date in real time.
This concept, called Big Data, will not only make
it possible for anyone to become an expert cardiologists in little or no time,
but also make it possible to sport heart conditions that much quicker.
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The US$199 Eko Core, powered by IoT and using the
concept of Big Data, might finally help Health Care Professionals properly address
Cardiovascular disease, which affects 1 in 4 of the world’s population.
Eko Devices’ Eko Core is set
to get FDA (Federal Drug Administration) approval by the end of 2015. The Eko Core has been working with two (2)
Hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area to test their product, one of which is UCSF’s
department of cardiology.
Eko Devices lists VC (Venture Capital) investors Shazam and former
advisor to the HHS secretary John Noonan among its board of investors. They’ve
also been in partnership with a VC (Venture Capital) firm StartX accelerator at
Stanford, in the heart of Silicon Valley, in hopes of bringing this revolutionary
product to market
Doctors and Nurses in Jamaica may think this Eko Core a bit too small and expensive
to shell out US$199 for something that an EKG can do and worse only works with
an Apple iPhone.
Still, if it will can potentially diagnose heart conditions
correctly in real time and save on the visit to a cardiologist, then Eko Core is gonna be a device that’ll become an indispensable
standard as the Stethoscope itself has been for the past 200 years.
Here’s the link:
Eko
Devices Twitter Feed: @EkoDevices
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