Eko Core, the digital stethoscope from Eko Devices, a Berkeley, CA firm. It’s much more than a high-fidelity amplified stethoscope. You can store and share auscultations, as well as analyze and annotate them using a paired app, which wirelessly connects to the Eko Core. You can even listen to recordings shared by other clinicians through the Eko Core, so you can hear exactly what they heard when they conducted the exam.
Everything can be stored to an electronic medical record (EMR), just like a radiologist would save patient CT scans, and these can be compared during future exams. The data can even be live-streamed for tele-medicine applications, such as allowing cardiology specialists to help to diagnose patients in remote and understaffed clinics. All the sharing and streaming is done using HIPAA-compliant software, allowing it to be used and integrated into existing clinical practices and their IT systems.
When you get your stethoscope, you download the app and connect the stethoscope to your iPhone, iPad, or Android device via Bluetooth.
When you perform an auscultation exam, keep your iPhone handy: the software will automatically navigate you to record, store, or share the sounds. You can annotate and attribute recorded sounds to specific regions of the chest or back, say aortic valve region for heart sounds, or upper left for lungs. (Attributing sounds to specific locations is optional. You can just record the sounds on their own if you wish to.)
The sharing part is HIPAA compliant, and you can share the recordings with colleagues or save it to an EMR. You can also receive recordings from other clinicians and hear them right there in the stethoscope. So the stethoscope is not only a recording device, but also a playback device.