I work in the ER and when I'm taking care
of any patient that's in isolation, I have
to wear personal protective equipment.
You can see that when I'm wearing this personal
protective equipment, it's very difficult
to use a traditional stethoscope.
Sometimes, with some masks, it's not even
possible and then I would have to within 24
inches of the patient which puts me at risk
of contracting COVID.
I'd been working with Dr. Teng on this digital
stethoscope for another project in India and
I thought this is the perfect application
for this.
This project set out to develop a really low-cost, easy to use digital stethoscope.
We decided that to make a digital stethoscope accessible,
the best way to do it is just to use 3D printing.
This is our 3D printed digital stethoscope.
We modified a stethoscope that was already
open-source, just added the digital components
to it, so we've 3D printed a couple of parts,
and added a microphone to those parts, and
made it possible to connect up to a phone
and developed an app that helped it work with ear buds.
This app will live stream this stethoscope
heart sound back to your air pods.
So you can be sitting 10-15 feet away talking
to your patient who has this.
So you just tell me where I put it.
Right there.
(heart beat sound)
I can hear that perfectly.
That's going to be awesome.
This digital stethoscope can become a tool
for patients to be diagnosed without being
in proximity with the physician.
I've been using this over the past month as
I've worked
in the emergency department on several patients.
I use it on any patient that has COVID-like
symptoms.
It's kept us safe and helped us assess our
patients more appropriately.
The bluetooth stethoscope and digital stethoscope
has existed for a while
but they've all been very expensive.
This is an inexpensive design, less than $20,
and it's very simple to use.
We really had a goal to make this simple and
low cost to produce and assemble.
There's four 3D printed parts, plus a little
piece of diaphragm and a plastic tube and
an off-the-shelf gaming microphone.
So I'll start by taking the headpiece. One
key component is this tiny microphone and
we have a 3D printed part designed just the
right size that you can slip in this microphone.
You just connect this microphone piece with
the head, and then you have this cable,
a TR-RS, and then plug into your phone, then
you're set.
And you start the app, and you can start listening
to your heartbeat.
But let's try playing to the speaker, I'm
going to play this sound that we just recorded,
(heartbeat sound),
here it is.
You can take this digital signal and either
archive as a sound file or streaming real
time to a listening physician or a nurse practitioner
on the other side.
I want it to be used for telemedicine, I want
it to be used for patients in isolation, I
want it to be used in developing countries
that don't have access to health care.
We want this to be used because we want to
protect health care providers
and nurses working all over the world.
