(malangkota.go.id) – So far, health workers have used stethoscopes as the main aid when conducting initial patient examinations. However, during this pandemic, the use of analog stethoscopes is still less effective when health workers wear personal protective equipment. In order to minimize the transmission of Covid-19, Wahyu Teja, who is also a lecturer in Malang City, created a digital stethoscope so that health workers do not need to open their personal protective equipment when using the digital stethoscope.
A glimpse of the tool named inoscope similar to an analog stethoscope, but if examined again, a number of differences will be seen, such as in the metal head that health workers attach to the patient's chest, for example. An analog stethoscope only contains special metal that functions as a conductor of heartbeat and lung breathing sounds.
Wahyu, Tuesday (13/10/2020), said that the sound was channeled to a conductor cable and could be heard by health workers through two hearing aids attached to both ear holes. In a digital stethoscope (inoscope) inside the metal head is embedded a small microphone that functions as a converter of analog sound into digital sound.
Meanwhile, he said, the hearing aids on the left and right ears were replaced by a black box containing components of a number of electronic circuits and mini computers. Its function is to process data produced by the microphone, store it in a database and upload it to a digital application on a smartphone device.
“On an analog stethoscope, the patient's heartbeat and lung breath sounds can only be heard by one doctor. Whereas on an analog stethoscope, inoscope, the sound can be heard by many people through loudspeakers in different locations. In addition, it is also automatically uploaded to the facility big data or cloud and other supporting digital data," explained Wahyu.
Medically, the existence of this digital stethoscope is very helpful for medical personnel, especially during the current Covid-19 pandemic. So far, analog stethoscopes have been very difficult to use for health workers who use personal protective equipment. The sound of the patient's heartbeat and lung breathing cannot be distributed properly to the ear if used outside which is blocked by clothing such as personal protective equipment.
However, if you have to open a little of the medical personnel's personal protective equipment to put the tip of the stethoscope into the ear, it raises the possibility of Covid-19 transmission. This big idea is the basis for the creation of a digital stethoscope called or named inoscope The.
Currently inoscope has been tested on healthy people and showed results as expected. Although it still needs to be improved, especially in the sector of the clarity of the acoustic sound of the patient's lung breath. Inoskop will soon be tested on non-infected patients before being applied to infected patients including positive Covid-19 patients. (say/yon)
