Doctors have specially designed a stethoscope powered by artificial intelligence that can detect any heart condition in under 15 seconds.
The stethoscope allows doctors to listen to the internal sounds of a patient’s body, but a research team has drastically improved this device so that it can now, thanks to artificial intelligence, instantly detect cardiac abnormalities.
This stethoscope, developed by a team of researchers from Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, enables doctors to identify abnormalities in blood circulation and heartbeat.
A trial of this new stethoscope on 12,000 patients in 200 GP surgeries across United Kingdom showed that patients were twice as likely to be diagnosed with a heart problem compared to using a conventional stethoscope.
Dr Patrik Bächtiger, of Imperial College London’s National Heart and Lung Institute and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “The design of the stethoscope has been unchanged for 200 years, until now. So it is incredible that a smart stethoscope can be used for a 15-second examination, and then AI can quickly deliver a test result indicating whether someone has heart failure, atrial fibrillation or heart valve disease.“
