Listening to Real-World Experiences

Over the past three years, as we developed Stethophone, we’ve spoken to hundreds of people who feel this gap deeply. Many shared stories of going through round after round of tests, “symptom shopping,” and dealing with the anxiety that comes from experiencing non-specific symptoms at home for months or even years without anything concrete or actionable to do about it, other than booking the next appointment. What we found is that many people want more than just reassurance—they want a way to have more informed and effective conversations with their doctors. They want to play a bigger role in their own care and to help their doctors by bringing solid, empirical data to the table.

This gap is made even wider because our current healthcare practices rely on periodic check-ups that only give a snapshot of your heart health at that moment. Heart conditions can be sneaky, with symptoms that come and go, making it tough to catch them during those brief visits. Plus, more complex diagnostic tools like echocardiograms or MRIs are expensive and not always easy to access, which limits how often people get screened. So, we’re left with a system that misses out on the dynamic aspects of heart disease.

Traditional Challenges

Auscultation—listening to heart and lung sounds with a stethoscope—can reveal a lot about heart health. It’s a simple, non-invasive method that’s been around forever, and when a skilled doctor does it, it can pick up on things like arrhythmias, murmurs, and other signs that something might be wrong. Potential heart valve issues, rhythmic problems, stenosis, ischemia, heart failure and infections can be detected using heart sounds.  But here’s the catch: auscultation only works if those abnormal sounds happen to be present when you’re in the doctor’s office. While some of these sounds are persistent, many come and go. You might feel something off at home, but by the time you see your doctor, everything sounds normal again. Even with persistent heart sounds, some can be very faint, barely at the edge of human perception, so even a trained medical ear can be subjective or imperfect. The bottom line is things get missed and go unobserved; and that makes it hard for doctors to act.

Making Conversations with Doctors More Effective

To help close this gap, we developed Stethophone — a smartphone-based auscultation tool that anyone can use to collect medical information about their heart health at home. Stethophone turns your smartphone into a powerful tool for capturing heart sounds anytime, anywhere. But we didn’t stop there. We knew that just recording heart sounds wasn’t enough, so we integrated advanced AI technology that can analyze those recordings in real-time. Our AI algorithms are designed to pick up on key indicators of heart health, like the first and second heart sounds (S1/S2), murmurs, heart rate, and even abnormal rhythms like bradycardia and tachycardia. Our AI went live in Ukraine earlier this year, and so far thousands of people have benefitted from it. We are now seeing interest from numerous countries for both clinical and home use of the technology.

What’s really exciting is that our AI has evolved to become incredibly accurate. For example, when it comes to detecting murmurs, we’re hitting precision and recall rates of over 92% — that’s on par with, and sometimes even better than, traditional methods used in clinics. But beyond just the numbers, we really want people to use this information to make their conversations with their doctors more effective. When you bring empirical medical data to the table-like heart sound recordings that show exactly what’s been happening — you’re giving your doctor a huge advantage. It helps them see the full picture, even if the symptoms aren’t present during your visit. By empowering you to actively participate in your healthcare, Stethophone helps ensure that heart problems don’t slip through the cracks, making the dialogue between you and your doctor more informed and ultimately more effective.