CINCINNATI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Computational Signal Detection (CSD) Laboratories LLC announced today that it has appointed Andrew Redington, MD, an internationally renowned cardiologist, as a medical adviser to the company. Dr. Redington will provide counsel to CSD Labs on the clinical roll-out of its eMurmur™ computer-aided auscultation platform, which is designed to objectively and accurately identify pathological versus innocent heart murmurs.
(Click here to view video interview with Dr. Redington.)
There is a significant unmet clinical need to standardize auscultation. Heart auscultation (Latin verb auscultare meaning “to listen”) with a stethoscope is the 200+-year-old “standard” examination method worldwide for the screening of heart defects in patients of all ages for the purpose of identifying abnormal heart sounds (“murmurs”). Auscultation is often referred to as an art, since a correct diagnosis can be challenging for various reasons and is exclusively dependent on the medical professional’s qualifications.
“We are extremely pleased to be working with such an esteemed physician as Dr. Redington,” said Andreas Schriefl, Ph.D., CEO and Founder of CSD Labs, developer and marketer of eMurmur. “The new digital health app eMurmur™ is just what the doctor ordered to drive rapid adoption of electronic stethoscopes.”
“…accurate interpretation of heart sounds by primary care providers is fraught with error, leading to missed diagnosis of disease and/or excessive costs associated with evaluation of normal variants. Thus, automated heart sound analysis, also known as computer-assisted auscultation (CAA), has the potential to become a cost-effective screening and diagnostic tool...” (Source: Aetna Inc., 2013 Clinical Policy Bulletin, “Acoustic Heart Sound Recording and Computer Analysis.”)
“I think the way eMurmur will be utilized by payers is as a mandatory screening tool,” said Dr. Redington. “An echocardiogram can cost many thousands of dollars. If it’s used as the primary screening tool, clearly that’s going to impact a payer. I could imagine a situation where a payer will insist on eMurmur being used in order to screen out the very large number of normal patients who may otherwise have undergone an echocardiogram, with the incumbent costs not only to the payer but to the patient in terms of his co-pay. A 10 or 20 percent co-pay on a $5,000 investigation can be very very significant for patients and their families,” Dr. Redington said.
eMurmur is an app that runs on a mobile device, such as a smart phone or tablet. Via Bluetooth® or audio cable the eMurmur app pairs with any commercially available electronic stethoscope or other appropriate recording device and receives and sends the acquired heart sounds to a server for sophisticated automated analysis. After a few seconds, results are displayed to the health care professional on their mobile device for review, comparison, consultation, or adding their own findings in an efficient and standardized way.
CSD Labs (Computational Signal Detection Laboratories) is a privately held medical technology company specializing in Machine Intelligence approaches for the analysis and classification of complex human data for innovative medical applications. CSD Labs offers clinically validated eMurmur for automating detection of heart defects by assisting physicians in performing auscultation.
