Oh, gadget! The Stemoscope stethoscope

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

For a modest sum, you might purchase your own personal Stemoscope wireless stethoscope. No prescription or license required. According to UK medical student Youtube review, the Stemoscope is probably not medical-grade, simply because of the costs and red tape, associated with obtaining medical-device clearance (Burton, 2019; Ollie Burton). A comment, which suggests, together with the website’s M.D. review, that the device is powerful enough to pick up body sounds. However, this also means that the Stemoscope is a gadget that has not been cleared by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA, or equivalent agency elsewhere—except perhaps in China where the Stemoscope was apparently used, on an emergency basis, as a monitoring and safe auscultation device, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in Wuhan (Stemoscope blog; Newscast). Emergency use, considering that. the use of classic stethoscopes with tubing becomes incompatible with the protection against infection afforded by the hazmat suits that medical professionals were required to wear.  

Still, in the US, such items as device accuracy and reliability, among many others, remain unapproved even if this sort of certified testing might have been performed during the R&D process. With these cautions in mind, the Stemoscope‘s brand name shares four letters “STEM” with a now-famous educational acronym (Hefferman, 2019): Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, where the device has found one of its niches.  

The Stemoscope is a wireless, Bluetooth®-enabled stethoscope device that pairs with a mobile device such as an Android or Apple smartphone. The mobile device, equipped with a dedicated app, processes and amplifies the sounds captured by the Stemoscope, in turn sending them to Bluetooth®-enabled, or wired, earphones. The Stemoscope app (see animated gif below) instructs on where to position the Stemoscope on your chest to listen to heart and lung sounds, and on your arm for blood pressure sounds. The app also enables storage of recordings for archiving, sharing, and emailing.

Two new apps, the PetStemo and BabyStemo, respectively enable users to listen to the heartbeats of their pets and baby in-utero. The Babystemo app also offers to record in-utero sounds for reassuring playback to newborn infants, or for sharing with family and friends. In other words, couples no longer need to wait for prenatal visits to hear their baby's heart beating.

Below, an animated gif of the Stemoscope app, together with images of two Stemoscope models: the Standard and the PRO. 

The more recent PRO version is able to pair directly with Bluetooth®-enabled earphones for listening to sounds, without recording; or to pair directly to Bluetooth®-enabled smartphone and PC for listening to sounds, without earphones. The PRO model also has a noise-canceling function, as well as longer battery life. Pink and blue-colored models of the standard version also exist.

References

Burton, O. (Sept. 15, 2019) Postgradmedic - Bluetooth Stethoscope!. Youtube video.   https://youtu.be/cKhAggJ-5qE

Hefferman, V. (Dec. 17, 2019) How we learned to love the pedagogical vapor of STEM. WIRED.   https://www.wired.com/story/how-we-learned-to-love-pedagogical-vapor-stem

Newscast (in Chinese with subtitles) Stemoscope use during the Wuhan COVID-19 crisis. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjU-YGSlgqo

Ollie Burton (website) -  https://ollieburton.com/

Stemoscope (website) - https://www.stemoscope.com/

Stemoscope (blog) Stemoscope in fighting COVID-19 disease. 

https://www.stemoscope.com/blog/