An upgraded stethoscope using artificial intelligence (AI) could help detect three different heart conditions in just 15 seconds, according to the results of a real-world trial.
Doctors use a stethoscope to pick up abnormal sounds produced by organs like the heart, lungs, and intestines, allowing them to diagnose various conditions. It has been a vital tool for medics over the past two centuries.
Now, a British team has conducted a study using the new version of the tool, which pairs a stethoscope with AI capabilities, helping doctors identify heart failure, heart valve disease, and abnormal heart rhythms almost instantly.
The stethoscope, which “could be a real game-changer”, was studied by researchers at Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS trust.
Instead of a traditional chest piece, it uses a device around the size of a playing card. Equipped with a microphone, it can analyze subtle differences in heartbeat and blood flow, which would not be noticeable to a human ear.
Simultaneously, it can take a rapid ECG to record the electrical activity of the heart and then send it to the cloud for analysis. Reportedly, AI has been trained on data from tens of thousands of patients.
The study was done on over 12,000 patients from 96 surgeries using AI-powered stethoscopes from the US firm Eko Health. The data was then compared to patients from 109 GP surgeries who were examined using routine methods.
According to the results, heart failure was 2.33 times more likely to have been detected with the AI version of the device, abnormal heartbeat was 3.5 times more detectable, and heart valve disease was 1.9 times more detectable. In all of these cases, early diagnosis is vital.
The findings were presented to thousands of doctors at the European Society of Cardiology annual congress in Madrid.
"This is an elegant example of how the humble stethoscope, invented more than 200 years ago, can be upgraded for the 21st century,” Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, clinical director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and consultant cardiologist, said, according to the BBC.
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She highlighted how important such innovations are, "because so often this condition is only diagnosed at an advanced stage when patients attend hospital as an emergency.”
"Given an earlier diagnosis, people can access the treatment they need to help them live well for longer."
The researchers are planning to introduce the device across the UK after a study in 205 GP surgeries in west and north-west London.
Scientists are developing similar devices for our closest friends — pets. In 2024, University of Cambridge researchers developed a machine learning algorithm able to detect heart murmurs in dogs with a sensitivity of 90%.
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