THE EKO CORE: A STETHOSCOPE IN A CLASS OF ITS OWN

Doctors will be able to record the sound of your heart

It’s a module that you can add directly to a standard stethoscope. When it’s switched off, the stethoscope works as a classic one, but when it’s turned on, it not only allows users to easily convert their existing stethoscopes from analog to digital, the doctor can also change the volume and have a more precise idea of what is happening in the patient’s chest.

It can be linked to an app that transcribes the heartbeat of the patient into a graph that completes the classic audio diagnosis. So you can see and hear the heartbeats at the same time. The Eko Core can also send a visualization of the beats via bluetooth. So then it can be saved, sent for a second opinion or played backed.

This opens the potential for heart sounds to be stored in the cloud, for clinicians to reference or analyze the big data, which will improve their understanding of the human heart. High-quality care could be provided at a lower cost. Unnecessary tests could be avoided.

If we can bring expert cardiologists from Johns Hopkins to the patient in rural Nebraska or a rural village in India, that opens up the opportunity to save lives. What we’re seeing with the age of telemedicine is now we can take a heart sound from a rural, underserved community and send that to a cardiologist for an instant second opinion, said Jason Bellet, the chief operating officer at Eko Devices.