In particular, the piece highlights Aortic Stenosis (AS), which affects about 2% of the population rising rapidly to greater than 10% for older people. The DETECT-AS trial, at the center of the article, shows promise: when care providers were automatically alerted to existing severe aortic stenosis (AS) findings buried in echocardiogram reports, treatment rates improved significantly. That’s a win. [Circulation. 2025;151:1508–1511]

Consider this: in DETECT-AS, the use of an automated electronic notification system increased valve replacement rates from 19% to 26% at 90 days, and from 37% to 48% at one year. That’s not a tweak,  it’s a substantial uptick in life-saving action. Importantly, the alert system improved referral rates equally for women and non-white patients, addressing long-standing disparities in cardiovascular care. [Circulation, 2025]

I agree with this direction; electronic provider notifications (EPNs) are a smart, scalable nudge that closes a dangerous gap in the system. Too often, diagnosis happens but action doesn’t follow. EPNs help fix that.

But it’s important to not mistake this kind of detection for screening.

The patients in DETECT-AS already had an echocardiogram. They were already in the system. Their hearts had already spoken and what EPNs did was prompt someone to finally listen. That’s critical, but it’s not screening in the public health sense. Screening means finding people before they show up at the echo lab. Before symptoms. Before hospitalization. Before the tell tail heart murmur is missed or dismissed. This is the effective front line where we must meet the disease.

The stakes are high. Up to 50% of people with untreated, symptomatic severe AS die within a year. Even among those without symptoms, the rate of death, stroke, or hospitalization in the surveillance group of the EARLY-TAVR trial was 45% over just 3.8 years. [Genereux et al., NEJM 2025;392:217–227]

Early detection can’t wait. That’s the role Stethophone was built to fill.

Traditional approaches to screening have leaned heavily on a narrow funnel of overtaxed experts; people who must be physically present, with specialized equipment, at the same time and place as the patient. In the face of population scale health challenge (like AS), that model is slow, expensive, and fragile. It also leaves far too many patients undiagnosed until their condition becomes critical.

Murmurs, particularly those from low-flow AS, are notoriously difficult to detect, especially when masked by body habitus or  comorbidities. And while auscultation has long been treated as an art form, it hasn’t always been an accurate one. Studies show that murmur detection by traditional means can be inconsistent and subjective.

Stethophone changed that. We’ve radically improved murmur detection sensitivity into the 90%+ range,  not with new gadgets or elaborate workflows to manage, but with a smartphone. We extract signals that often get missed, and we do it without requiring an expert in the room. What was once a specialist skill is now broadly accessible, objective, and shareable.  Whether you’re a frontline nurse, a rural clinician, or a concerned individual at home, you can now instantly generate  clinical marker that leads to timely echocardiography and specialist care. That’s not passive detection. That’s real, proactive screening, the kind that reaches people before symptoms do.

DETECT-AS gets it right, we need to act on what’s already known. But we also need to know more, sooner. The system hears late. Screening means listening early.