A low-cost digital chestpiece and AI-assisted workflow for pediatric visits, sports physicals, and school-based screening—designed to widen the net, then refer only the concerning cases to a real cardiologist.
HCM is a leading sudden-death concern in young athletes—and many affected kids have few or no symptoms before an event.
Over two-thirds of school-age children may have an innocent murmur, so frontline referral decisions are noisy.
Schools are investing in cardiac emergency readiness. Ausculta is the upstream detection layer.
The issue is not that every child needs a cardiologist. The issue is that too many high-risk kids never generate enough signal to get referred in time—while most kids with murmurs are ultimately fine.
Most screening still starts with a brief family-history review and a quick listen during well visits or sports physicals. That works for many kids, but it leaves a gray zone: the subtle murmur, the borderline concern, the repeat visit that never happens, the school athlete who looked healthy until the day they did not.
Think of it as a shared, low-cost screening workflow—not a premium gadget and not a replacement for cardiology.
A nurse, pediatrician, or school clinician records 10–15 second clips at 2–4 listening positions.
The app checks signal quality before any interpretation so messy recordings do not masquerade as pathology.
The output is intentionally narrow: repeat, watch, or refer.
Concerning cases generate a compact packet for pediatric cardiology review instead of a vague 'come back if it gets worse.'
It helps catch the "I want one more datapoint before I decide" cases, then routes the real edge cases to a cardiologist faster.
screen wide → refer narrowThe goal is not a luxury digital stethoscope. The goal is a small signal-capture tool that works with ordinary Android hardware.
Single-sided chestpiece keeps the build cheaper, smaller, and easier to disinfect.
Enough fidelity for phonocardiogram capture without premium metal acoustics.
On-device buffering, Bluetooth link, simple button control, and low power draw.
Recharge once and share across a clinic day, sports physical line, or screening event.
Useful in noisy environments, training, or quick listen-back without cloud dependency.
These are target economics for a shared screening model and should be read as design goals, not final quotes.
Current digital stethoscopes commonly retail around this benchmark.
Pilot BOM target using commodity electronics and existing Android hardware.
Per-student aspiration when a shared device screens a few hundred children per year.
The first buyers are not cardiology departments. They are the people already doing physicals, screenings, and referrals.
Well visits, school forms, sports clearance, repeat listens.
Fits naturally into routine care where most borderline cardiac questions already surface.
Mass participation sports physicals and event-day screening.
Creates an upstream detection layer before the emergency-response layer ever has to be used.
Community outreach, grant-funded screening days, referral partnerships.
Useful where mission, visibility, and pediatric cardiology access can reinforce each other.
The same low-cost screening stack can also support pediatric and rheumatic-heart-disease programs in lower-resource settings.
Shared-device programs generate revenue, operational data, and product feedback.
Volume manufacturing and workflow simplification push screening cost down.
Support children and adolescents in settings where pediatric cardiology access is thin.