15 year-old transforms an iPhone case into a better stethoscope with 3D printing
One of the marquee features of nowadays' smartphones is their integrated heart rate monitor. On Apple store you can find some heart rate measuring apps that use the iPhone's camera and light. But 15 year old student Suman Mulumudi has used a 3D printer and his design skills to transform Apple's iPhone device into a stethoscope, which could help doctors all over the world.
He named it the Steth IO, which is a smartphone case that enables the phone to easily collect heart and lung sounds. It is equipped with a diaphragm that collects low-frequency sounds from a patient and sends them through a tube to the microphone, turning his iPhone into a stethoscope.
So how did the Steth IO come about? Like a lot of other young people, Suman has always had plenty of questions for his dad about his job. His father Mahesh, is a cardiologist, who would explain the medical world, heart murmurs and his job challenges in dinnertime conversations.
Traditional stethoscopes allow healthcare providers to listen to heart and lung sounds, but couldn't record the data from the sound of the heart. Suman wanted to help finding a way to solve the problems.
Last summer, Suman's parents bought him a MakerBot Replicator 2 desktop 3D printer. "We put it together. We used it for about half a year. That got me exposed, to the extent that I could see the power 3D printing would have," he said to Makerbot.
Using off-the-shelf parts and the 3D printer, Suman built the Steth IO. He says the first version of the case took around two weeks to design. But after 3D printing a number of Steth IO prototypes, Mulumudi founded his own company known as StratoScientific. And he applied for a patent to cover the technology and plans to seek FDA approval and venture capital funding for this innovative device.
To Suman, having an idea that can make a change, and can really change the way people live is "mind-blowing". "People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz — mostly Washington people — they all did one thing: They took an idea and expanded that concept into something that changed the world," he added.