AI-enabled stethoscopes may boost diagnosis of heart diseases: Study

New Delhi: Amid growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, a new large-scale clinical trial published in The Lancet on Thursday showed that an AI-enabled stethoscope can boost early detection of various heart diseases.

A team of Spanish researchers found that an AI-enabled stethoscope helped doctors in identifying early signs of serious heart conditions, such as heart failure, arrhythmias, and valve disease, in primary care clinics.

The study found that introducing the technology to doctors led to a substantially faster and more frequent detection -- nearly twice as many new heart failure cases and three times as many detections of irregular heart rhythms -- of these cardiovascular conditions, indicating that the device performed well.