US$199 Eko Core Stethoscope by @EkoDevices means Nurses and Doctors can become Cardiologists

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.

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.  

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

Eko Core Electronic Stethoscope

Eko Devices Website