Digital stethoscope improves heart murmur detection

Eko Core is an FDA-approved adapter that attaches to a stethoscope and streams heartbeat data to a cloud

Created by Eko Devices, a Berkeley-based startup, Eko Core adds a digital dimension to the normal stethoscope and provides doctors with a new layer of information to analyse.

Co-founder of Eko Devices, Connor Landgraf, said: “It’s incredibly challenging to hear a minute heart murmur, especially in patients with high heart rates. Cardiologists say it’s almost like a musical ear, it’s something that you have to learn over five or ten years of practice.”

Eko Core allows physicians to see heartbeats in wave form on a mobile device as well as hear the sound at an amplified level. Both the visible and audible data can be recorded and shared between physicians and hospitals.

This can take a lot of the guesswork out of detecting murmurs, valve problems, and blockages in the arteries.

Eko is running a pilot with Stanford Hospital, where all residents will be using the Eko Core device as a training tool. The company has also released the device to be purchased by the public.

Eko Devices is also developing an algorithm in order to match heartbeats to conditions in real-time, however the company has said it will not be launched until early 2016.

Landgraf said: “Right now you can catheterise a patient to find out what the pressures are like inside of the heart, but it’s very invasive and inefficient.”