Intelligent Digital Stethoscope for Improved Auscultation and Remote Healthcare
Innovate UK
Laennec Ai Limited
**Purpose:** Designing and marketing cost-effective high-end technology stethoscopes using bottom-up approach.    **Problem:** Stethoscopes available in the market have undergone very little innovation. Of those, most have been developed by taking into consideration the engineer's perspective and not the user's perspective in mind. They also tend to be very expensive, especially for a medical professional from developing nations.    **Solution:** After working in the medical care sector for a decade, we realized that essential clinical tools used today are technologically outdated. This led to the idea of developing cost-effective digital medical devices using high-end technology with Artificial Intelligence (AI). We aim to design our products from a user's perspective using an evidence-based Public Health tool - Health Needs Assessment (HNA). HNA is widely used in Public Health to understand the needs of the user and to improve the quality of healthcare delivered. This tool uses a bottoms-up approach to provide services that are tailor-made for the users.    **Uniqueness:** We re-design and digitalise the stethoscope with four pillars in mind. They are accuracy, interoperability, intelligence, and aesthetics (user friendliness, and looks). The current stethoscope technology uses a normal microphone-based system is not smart and lacks the capability to track, store and share information.    Our intelligent stethoscopes are capable of:    * Interoperability (Storing and sharing information in audio and video format)  * Supporting health professionals for better decisions: Integrated with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence    All these advancements come without compromising the looks, the stethoscopes have touch screen displays with GUI interface and come with a compatible application that runs on mobile and PCs.    **Green Growth strategy:** We are focused on a green growth strategy and aim to use sustainable and environmentally friendly materials.    **Equality strategy**: We are committed to ensuring that equality and human rights are considered in everything we do.    The market is massive. Our stethoscopes can be used by doctors, nurses, paramedics, veterinarians, and home healthcare. Sooner this tool is going to be inevitable for remote healthcare and telemedicine. The global stethoscope market size is anticipated to reach USD 826.72 million by 2028\. The global medical devices market size accounted at US$ 447.63 billion in 2019\. The Covid-19 pandemic shown us the requirement of tools for remote healthcare. Our major competitors are Littmann Eko, and ThinkLabs. We have a competitive advantage over them in terms of technology, sensors, aesthetics, algorithm and artificial intelligence, that we are using to deliver user requirements.
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