It can be stressful and frustrating to try and figure out the cause of a respiratory problem in your child or yourself. It's all the above, plus more, in the middle a friggin RESPIRATORY DIISEASE pandemic.
StethoMe is a startup competing in the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield competition. It aims to alleviate some of these problems for parents and children with asthma. It developed a smart, connected device that allows parents to perform lung exams at home. The device can send high-fidelity recordings to their children's doctor, and uses machine-learning to flag any potential issues.
This is the device.
It will turn on when you turn it on. The built-in screen will guide you through the procedure. It will tell you where to place it, how quiet the room is, and other details. It will measure 6-8 points and provide a report that includes details such as heart rate, respiratory rate, and whether it detected any audio abnormalities like crackles, rhonci (gurgling sounds due to fluid), wheezing, or wheezing.
You can then send the link to the report to your children's doctor. They will be able to hear the audio recorded from each chest point. The scrubbable spectrum provides a visual overview of every recording and flags any abnormalities. This is how the report looks:
This information is intended to assist parents and doctors in detecting asthma attacks sooner and more accurately. It also helps determine if long-term medication are effective at relieving symptoms that are harder to detect. Do you think that increasing the dosage helped?
Wojciech Radomski, co-founder, tells me that their product has been certified in Europe as a medical device. He obtained CE marks for the AI and the device. The FDA approval process in America is currently underway.
TechCrunch Disrupt announced that Poland's Ministry of Health had purchased 1,000 devices for a pilot program with more than 100 doctors. Radomski told me that they have already recorded over 70,000 recordings in the last month.
This idea is a little too personal, but I love it. Asthma was a part of my childhood. For a while, it dominated my life. Even after doctors managed to control it (thanks science, love you), six-year old me was convinced that I was about to suffer an asthma attack. Fear of not being able to breathe led to crushing anxiety that eventually made me believe I couldn't breathe. Although I cannot speak for the FDA on how this thing works, I wish I could pack it up and put it in a time machine. I would send it back in 1993 to lil me with a note saying Use this to breathe easier. Although we should buy bitcoin early, I don't think it is a good idea to mess with the timeline.
StethoMe claims it has raised several rounds (a $400K preseed, $2M seed and $2.5M Series B) and received almost $3M in grants through Poland's National Center for Research and Development.
