Giving the Humble Stethoscope an AI Upgrade Could Save Millions of Kids (ieee.org)

the_newsbeagle writes: The stethoscope is a ubiquitous medical tool that has barely changed since it was invented in the early 1800s. But now a team of engineers, doctors, and public health researchers have come together to reinvent the tool using adaptive acoustics and AI. Their motivation is this statistic: Every year, nearly 1 million kids die of pneumonia around the world, with most deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The death toll is highest among children under the age of 5. The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University, designed a smart stethoscope for use by unskilled workers in noisy medical clinics. It uses a dynamic audio filtering system to remove ambient noise and distracting body sounds while not interfering with the subtle sounds from the lungs. And it uses AI to analyze the cleaned-up signal and provide a diagnosis.

Comments

WhoopeeShit

[AndyKron]

And it will only cost ten times what a normal one would AND the yearly software license will be so affordable!

Re:Cool stuff

[swillden]

It will need batteries.

Sure. Batteries are cheap.

It will cost a bundle.

There's no reason to expect this to be the case. It's a device specifically targeted at very poor regions of the world and there's nothing about it that requires expensive hardware. It requires a lot less hardware than is in the typical low-end smartphone that sells in India for $40.

It may have annual licensing fees.

How much do you want to bet me that it doesn't?

It will surely need an internet connection.

There is absolutely no reason for it to need an Internet connection.

Or would that same money be better put into training its workers as health care technicians specifically skilled to diagnose pneumonia through traditional stethoscopes? No licensing. Stethoscopes are dirt cheap.

But training is very expensive, and you're talking about very complex training.