Earlier today, Sparrow Bioacoustics launched a product into the US App Store. We think this represent a new level of offering in the consumer medical and healthcare space.

It’s called Stethophone, and it belongs to a class of product called Software As a Medical Device (SAMD). Stethophone is a class II, FDA cleared application. The first of its kind to be cleared by the FDA for consumer use.

Stethophone is a software application that converts your Smartphone into a medical grade stethoscopic device. Quite simply your phone can now listen to your heart and lungs and record that signal anywhere any time. No gadgets no attachments nothing new to charge or wear.

Using sound to assess the condition of your heart and lungs is not new. In the last two hundred  years doctors leaned how to “hear” dozens of diseases. Sound is extremely rich in diagnostic information. It tells us a great deal about the structural and rhythmic condition of the heart. In many cases it can help doctors catch diseases early – before they progress. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death. CVD kills 5x as many women as breast cancer. Often, it is missed until it’s too late.

So we at Sparrow gathered a team of engineers, bio-acousticians, doctors, and researchers and decided to create a new kind of product. We wanted to see if we could turn the world’s smartphones into cardiac and pulmonary auscultation devices: making collecting diagnostic information about  your heart as easy as using a home thermometer. It will evolve quickly into a system smart enough to help detect disease at scale.

The rational was simple, your doctor can’t always be there – and symptoms and concerned happen at home. That is where you need to capture  the data.

We want to give people a medically powerful way to do this, and to use the data to get better and faster care. Our goal is to help a million people and beyond. Our sound algorithms make Stethophone of one of the finest stethoscopic devices on the market.  But we are not stopping there. We are teaching machines 200 years of auscultation using with what will soon be the largest  database of human chest sounds in history; so they can help identify anomalies that even doctors can’t always here.

Today is culmination of years of work by dedicated experts, thousands of steps in testing and refinement and regulatory, and great support from our investors, partners, and friends.

Stehophone is off to a great start. Our pilot efforts in Ukraine have involved thousands of people and helped save a few lives. And now, we are available in the US to help people listen and record their heart and lungs at home.  It’s been a long road, but this is still only the first step. The challenge now is fitting it into people’s lives in way that helps them and their doctors now and in the future. In the months ahead, we are listening and watching very closely as we continue to invest, add-value and refine our offering. Stethophone represents our belief that  people can participate more in their own care. When people have real empirical medical data to engage with the health care system it gives them more agency, peace of mind and often better outcomes.

Follow this link for Stethophone in the App Store