Thinklabs, a company that specializes in the development of electronic stethoscopes and mobile medical technologies, has announced Stethoscope App for Apple iPhone (News - Alert) and iPod Touch.

 

The application works with Thinklabs’ patented ds32a Digital Stethoscope.

 

The new Stethoscope App offers real-time visual display of patient heart and lung sounds. Physicians, nurses, students, EMTs and others now have a complete mobile auscultation tool for recording, displaying, editing, saving and e-mailing stethoscope sounds of heart, lungs and bowel right at the bedside, in the physician’s office or remote care environment.

 

Furthermore, it is also useful for medical educators teaching physical examination skills, physicians in private practice wanting to add stethoscope sounds and waveforms to their electronic medical records (EMR) and telemedicine or remote users, to send sound and image files directly from their iPhone or Touch to multiple recipients.

 

The phonocardiogram waveform, while capturing heart sounds, is displayed along with the spectrogram, that shows the pitch and frequency characteristics of the sound. The recordings can be edited, saved and e-mailed on the iPhone or iPod Touch. The formatting of the e-mails is done automatically with the attached .wav files and waveform images. Thinklabs’ free Phonocardiography software can then be used on Mac or PC for further signal processing, display or listening.

 

For educators, residents and medical students, special features are provided, with a library of heart sounds built into the App as Reference Sounds.

 

Clive Smith, CEO of Thinklabs elaborated on this feature, “Going forward, we will expand on the educational content by providing new sounds along with educational materials. This is just the beginning, as we provide upgrades of content and features in the future to our user community.”

 

Smith described his company’s approach to the App, “We have a large stethoscope user base that communicates closely with us about their needs and wants. I have personally spoken to over 25,000 physicians and nurses over the last few years. That’s quite a focus group! Based on their feedback, I believe that we are giving them a tool that takes the stethoscope to a new level of utility.”

 

Leading software designer, Tom Andersen, having a vast experience utilizing Apple’s (News - Alert) graphics and user interface capability to create sophisticated scientific software usable by all audiences has developed the software.

 

Smith explained further, “Tom has developed an App that displays complex data with great clarity, and provides rich features with extraordinary simplicity. A doctor can record, display, edit and e=mail a heart sound in about 30 seconds. That’s an incredible feat for software design, and a reflection of how well Stethoscope App uses the fantastic iPhone user interface. There is a real challenge today to create superior clinical tools while simplifying the workflow. Stethoscope App is amazingly simple to use, despite its powerful feature set.”

 

Thinklabs has become the first company to provide an electronic stethoscope with recording and display of heart and lung sounds on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

 

In related mobile medical technology news, WebMD Health Corp. has announced a set of new enhancements for Medscape Mobile to assist physicians in diagnosis and treatment at the point-of-care.