Posted on August 6, 2018August 6, 2018

Digital Health – Is the Stethoscope Redundant?

BY: Gabriel Craven0 COMMENTS CATEGORY: Medical ICT, POST

As opposed to the convenient stethoscope, the innovation of the digital stethoscope allows the heart sounds to be digitized for further visualization, analysis, and transmission.

This innovation provides advancement and development in the field of telemedicine allowing stakeholders to improve diagnostics accuracy and reduce complications.

This non-invasive diagnostic tool provides increased precision and audible advantage over the conventional stethoscope, the diagnostic power provided by digital stethoscope to a physician can assist in altering management in patient care.

Some of these alterations in medical care are in areas that are underserved or do not have medical facilities by applying digital stethoscope technology to telemedicine to allow remote assessment.

Digital stethoscopes can provide real-time monitoring being able to send the right information to the right people at the right time which is what digital health is all about.

An example of this is from a Brisbane-based company M3DICINE which launched Stethee, a wireless, artificial intelligence-boosted stethoscope that pairs with an iOS or Android app to quickly capture and analyse heart and lung data.

Even though this device is innovative, there are some disadvantages in the development of the digital stethoscope particularly in the landscape of auscultation skills. Physicians and students will rely on the digital information resulting in a decrease in the skills (old techniques) used in diagnostics with conventional stethoscopes.

The advancement of the digital stethoscope will require training, new skills for the professional practice resulting in increased expenses, increase time spent using the complex digital stethoscopes compared to conventional stethoscopes.

Another potential disadvantage is the decrease in the quality of physician-patient interaction resulting in a shift in diagnostic knowledge from tactical to precise knowledge.

Although not a disadvantage it is an important point to mention the storage and access of the patient information produced by digital stethoscopes. Who has access to this information?, where is this information stored?, how secure is it?, how long is it stored for and how will it be used?

It’s clear the advantages of the digital stethoscope outweighs the disadvantages, however, with digital innovation increasing in every aspect of medical care such as the innovation in portal ultrasound devices threatening the long-term use of the stethoscope.

Is the stethoscope redundant? Not yet, it still survives through its evolution from the original wooden design to the modern digital stethoscope we are seeing today and for now it still remains a vital diagnostic tool for medical care.