Team StethoCloud: University of Melbourne, Australia
Australia was represented in the finals by Team StethoCloud from the University of Melbourne. Their project, StethoCloud, is a cloud-powered, mobile-hybrid stethoscope for early detection of pneumonia. It connects to the patient's smartphone via the headphone jack and sends diagnostic information into a cloud service that analyses a patients breathing sounds.
"We basically took a stethoscope head, ripped out the body and added a microphone inside," explained team member Hon Wen Chong. "It's actually quite cheap. The whole thing only costs around 15 to 20 dollars to make."
Team StethoCloud then built an application that prompts the user to enter personal data such as their date of birth and questions relating to symptoms.
"It asks the important questions that a doctor would also ask," explains Hon Wen. The user then uses the 'Stethomic' to take five-second recordings of specific areas of their body. The audio files are then uploaded to the cloud where they undergo a diagnostic algorithm. The results are then sent back to the user, together with a treatment plan.