In the future, when your doctor wants to listen to your heart, don't be surprised if he pulls both a stethoscope and his smartphone from his white coat.
The Food and Drug Administration says it has approved a digital stethoscope, the Eko Core, which combines the most traditional of a doctor's instruments — the stethoscope — with one of the newest, to bring the technique of listening to a heartbeat firmly into the 21st century.
The digital version will wirelessly stream the heart sounds it detects to a smartphone app, available now on the Apple App Store and coming next year to Android, which can save the data to a patient's electronic record.
It can also be shared with a cardiologist over a secure link for an instant second opinion.
The Eko Core stethoscope and its companion app were created by a startup company formed by a team of engineering and business school graduates from the University of California, Berkeley.
The stethoscope, in its current form, has been around for some 200 years, invented by a French physician, René Laënnec, to avoid the embarrassment of having to put his ear directly against women's chests to listen for their heartbeat.
Originally a simple wooden tube, it has been improved several times over the intervening centuries.
The Eko Core system, because it will allow a physician to both hear and see heart rhythms in detail, has "the potential to improve a physician's diagnostic acumen," says Dr. Robert Harrington, a cardiologist and chairman of the department of medicine at Stanford University.
Harrington says he intends to use the Eko Core at the Stanford medical center as a teaching tool for incoming physician residents.
"They can hear while I listen and describe different heart sounds," thanks to the system's digital recording and wireless sharing technology, he says.
The FDA has approved the Eko Core, which can be attached to a conventional stethoscope, for sale in the U.S. market.
It will sell for $199, and a complete stethoscope with Echo Core installed will be available for $299.
Eko Core's founders say the software app meets federal standards for security and privacy.
Other cardiologists who have had a chance at hands-on use of the Eko Core said they were impressed.
"This is probably one of the most important innovations in the plain old stethoscope in recent years," says Dr. Charanjit Rihal, chairman of the division of cardiovascular diseases at the Mayo Clinic.
