Devices & Diagnostics, Health IT, Startups

This 15-year-old 3D printed a case that turns an iPhone into a stethoscope & started a company

Here’s a testament to how 3D printing is making rapid prototyping more accessible to startups […]

Here’s a testament to how 3D printing is making rapid prototyping more accessible to startups and entrepreneurs. Pictured here is a smartphone case designed and 3D printed by 15-year-old Suman Mulumudi, a student at Lakeside School in Seattle (where Bill Gates attended).

Mulumundi is also the CEO of Stratoscientific, a company he co-founded with his father, a cardiologist, to commercialize the case and another cardiology device he developed.

Last summer, his parents bought him a desktop 3D printer, and the budding engineer got to work. The case, called Steth IO, has a diaphragm on the back that collects low-frequency sounds of the heart beat and sends them through a series of tubes to the phone’s microphone. The accompanying app records and visualizes the sounds, with the goal of allowing physicians to more precisely identify abnormal heart sounds.

On its website, Stratoscientific positions the device as one that would allow consumers to monitor their heart sounds and transmit them to a physician remotely, as well as one that could potentially reduce unnecessary echocardiograms for diagnosis.

Mulumundi also designed and prototyped a second device using a microprocessor from a computer mouse. Appropriately called LesionSizer, the device would help cardiologists measure the length of vascular lesions so that they could choose and place the right size stent during angioplasty, rather than trying to guess the appropriate size.

According to MakerBot, the father-son duo has applied for patents and plans to seek FDA approval of the devices.

I wonder how the iPhone case would compare to Alivecor, the popular mobile heart monitor that’s already gotten FDA clearance?

[Image credit: King5 News]

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