He is his own pulmonologist
A startup from ITMO has created a smart stethoscope for everyone
Machine learning will help ordinary people monitor lung health
Startup Laeneco from ITMO University has created a smart stethoscope with the function of respiratory diagnostics. With the help of it and a special smartphone application using built-in machine learning algorithms, it is possible to detect the presence of pathologies in the lungs and identify various diseases at an early stage.
The gadget is designed for regular use by ordinary people. The user uses an electronic stethoscope to record his breathing, after which the application analyzes the sounds and reports the probability of pathologies (accuracy, according to research results, is 99 percent). The peculiarity of the service is that it analyzes not the sound tracks themselves, but spectrograms, that is, graphical representations of the physical characteristics of sounds. The respiration spectrogram is processed by a convolutional neural network. Such networks are also used in computer vision, image recognition, speech, and even in the analysis of the meaning of texts.
The device is suitable for analyzing the breathing of children from three years old and adults. At the moment (before passing the official medical certification), Laeneco is a recommendation service that is suitable for pre-medical diagnosis and tracking the dynamics of the development of the disease.
An additional option of Laeneco is the transfer and storage of data for their further processing by a doctor. Having received the sound of the lungs in high quality, the specialist will be able to provide advice and prescribe treatment immediately, remotely, or later to see how the disease developed in dynamics. It is planned that in the future the system will be able to identify deviations from the norm even better than a doctor does, due to the operation of the device in a wide frequency range.
The Laeneco stethoscope differs from its competitors in higher measurement accuracy, narrow specialization in the analysis of lung sounds, as well as a lower price. It is planned to enter the market in the near future. The first "smart stethoscopes" will be designed for home use, later it is planned to reach doctors and clinics. Already, the startup team has established contacts with doctors in polyclinics, as well as with scientists of the First St. Petersburg State Medical University named after Academician I.P. Pavlov. Recently, the startup visited Japan at the WARAKU SUMMIT, where it received government approval to bring the technology to market in Japan.
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