To stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic many healthcare companies are implementing telehealth and telemedicine platforms and wearable devices that allow remote patient monitoring. Now, Thinklabs One announced the launch of its electronic stethoscope that helps keep healthcare workers safe during the COVID-19 pandemic by allowing Safe Distance Auscultation. This is the process by which doctors can listen to patients' hearts and lungs while wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) or from a safe distance with the use of external speakers, or earbuds.
Thinklabs One helps doctors listen to patients' heart and lungs, which is imperative to a doctor's ability to treat patients, particularly those affected by COVID-19. Currently in use at prestigious medical facilities including Johns Hopkins, Mount Sinai, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the Thinklabs One features more than 100X amplification, as compared to a traditional acoustic stethoscope, says a press release.
Conventional stethoscopes with rubber tubing are not compatible with layers of PPE. The Thinklabs One has no tubing—just a universal size jack that can connect to speakers, headphones, or a Bluetooth transmitter to listen from a distance. This makes it easier to listen to patients' lungs over the noise caused by the filtration and purification systems in some PPE, or to set up telemedicine systems to listen to patients in separate rooms. The Thinklabs One is used extensively in telemedicine practices, and Thinklabs has created partnerships with key video conferencing providers including Zoom, Vidyo, Vsee, and others to provide best-in-class telemedicine capabilities with the device.
Thinklabs One supported doctors during the Ebola epidemic in Africa and at hospitals that were on the frontline in the U.S., including Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, the Nebraska Medical Center, and Emory Healthcare in Atlanta.
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“For more than 25 years, we have developed and manufactured electronic stethoscopes to improve the detection and diagnosis of disease and save patients' lives. Within one week in March, COVID-19 placed a new demand on our device: to save doctors' lives," said Clive Smith, CEO and founder of Thinklabs. "Like other medical device manufacturers, we saw a step-change in demand. Like doctors and nurses on the frontlines, we had to innovate in real-time, to accommodate entirely new use cases, such as doctors who wanted to listen from 25 feet away to patients who might be sitting in their cars in a drive-through diagnostic or testing site.”
