AI stethoscope developed that can diagnose heart diseases in just 15 seconds

UK Researchers have developed an AI-powered stethoscope that can diagnose three heart conditions—Heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and valvular heart disease in just 15 seconds. While the traditional stethoscope listens to sounds like a heartbeat or breathing, the AI-powered stethoscope goes further and can pick up on tiny changes in the heartbeat or blood flow while also performing a quick ECG (electrocardiogram) at the same time. The new device is the size of a playing card.

The new device has been showcased by researchers at Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as part of a study in the UK called TRICORDER.

How does the AI stethoscope work?

The AI stethoscope is placed on the chest of a patient to take an ECG recording of the electrical signals from their heart while its microphone records the sound of their blood flowing through the heart. This information is then sent to the cloud to be analyzed by the AI algorithms that have been trained on health data from tens of thousands of people and can detect subtle heart problems that a human may have missed.

The test result, which indicates whether the patient is flagged as at risk for heart failure or not, is then sent straight back to the smartphone.

The device can also connect via Bluetooth to a dedicated smartphone app where the captured data can be visualized. It uses cellular or Wi-Fi connectivity to access cloud-based AI algorithms to work its magic. These algorithms are managed by the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and are said to show promising results.

“The statistical performance of these three AI algorithms has been shown to be high and consistent against international external validation studies,” the authors of the research paper wrote in the BMJ Open journal.