Description:
Reference #1276:
The University of South Carolina is offering licensing opportunities for a novel stethoscope with an extended frequency range of bodily sound detection.
Background:
It has been reported that healthcare practitioners today are not very good at listening and identifying heart sounds with a stethoscope. This can cause problems in patient diagnosis as well as detection of the progression or regression of diseases.
Invention Description:
This invention is a small disk acoustic receiver that makes contact with the body in a similar way to a stethoscope. However, in addition to detecting body sounds (such as heart sounds), it also detects sounds above and below the frequency levels of human hearing. It amplifies and detects all body sounds, allowing diagnoses to be made earlier and more accurately.
Potential Applications:
This new device will assist in accurately identifying heart and other body sounds, as well as identifying new sounds that will help with patient diagnosis and medical treatment. Information from this device can also be used in combination with other patient data and assessed by artificial intelligence to enhance the accuracy of diagnoses. The device can be used in medical research to assess the effectiveness of treatment such as that of new medications, as it will be able to provide earlier and more sensitive detection of the progression or regression of disease. This extended analysis of body sounds can also be used as an educational tool in the health sciences.
Advantages and Benefits:
This device’s enhanced ability to detect and assess body sounds beyond the normal range of hearing will give the medical manufacturer a definite market advantage. Researchers and the pharmaceutical industry will have a more accurate, more sensitive, and more cost-effective way to conduct research as well as assess the therapeutic and preventive strategies which will be a significant advantage for them. For those manufacturers engaged in multimodality medical devices, combining this invention with other medical devices like ultrasound or electrocardiograms should be simple and effective.