LungPass – a wireless smart stethoscope that enables accurate lung examination at home.
Healthy Networks, a company based in Tallinn, Estonia, designed an innovative, AI-powered, Bluetooth wireless stethoscope called LungPass. It is a smart device to diagnose or monitor respiratory diseases conveniently at home.
It can analyze the lung sounds, thus helping in monitoring the pre-existing- or diagnosing new respiratory conditions. This enables a prompt diagnosis of many respiratory illnesses, such as pneumonia, thereby allowing timely diagnosis and intervention to avoid complications.
Stats:
In 2019 alone, respiratory diseases claimed approximately 5 million lives; therefore, there is a dire need to improve technology to detect respiratory disease in time. For example, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the fourth leading cause of death and the second most common hospital admissions cause. It affects approximately 251M people worldwide. About half of the known COPD patients suffer more than two exacerbations in a year, and out of these, 20% require hospitalization. The reason behind putting forward the statistics is to emphasize the need for technology that can detect the upcoming exacerbation; this is the goal of LungPass.
Accuracy of LungPass:
LungPass uses a large database of lung sounds. Top-notch professors’ panel has labeled these lung sounds. Therefore, the listening accuracy of LungPass is 87%, as opposed to the 62% accuracy of the classical stethoscope. Additionally, data has suggested a 97% result match of LungPass results with plain radiography and computed tomography scan.
Helena Binetskaya, CEO and co-founder of Healthy Networks, said:
‘Our product, LungPass, is the world’s first low-cost ANN-powered app and Bluetooth stethoscope for lungs. It turns lung sounds into objective early biomarkers of deadly lung conditions. The core technology has been built upon a large dataset of lung sounds labeled by a panel of professors in the respiratory field. Within the app, a person is given instructions on how to record lung sounds using the stethoscope. The number of required recordings varies depending on each patient’s history and individual medical condition, with the maximum being 11, with each lasting five seconds. Upon completion, the app informs the users about the sounds and explains the meaning behind the specific types of sounds. The app also asks to log symptoms to get a full clinical picture. As a result, it presents the most probable condition affecting that individual.’
It only takes a few minutes each day. Anyone can self-monitor their lung sounds. Everyone can detect deterioration or progression of a respiratory condition at the ease of their home.
Not only the patients, but the physicians can also get benefits of LungPass. This smart stethoscope can aid the physicians in their diagnosis by correctly detecting and spotting the otherwise subtle lung sounds on classical auscultation.
