Smartsound and SK Telecom announced on the 4th that they have signed a business cooperation agreement to provide artificial intelligence(AI) stethoscope for animals, WITHaPET, and AI auscultation and diagnosis services. It is expected to provide more accurate disease diagnosis services by adding not only video diagnosis but also AI auscultation and diagnosis to SK Telecom’s existing pet AI video diagnosis service, X Caliber.

Smartsound’s WITHaPET is an AI stethoscope for pets that uses artificial intelligence to diagnose heart disease early. SK Telecom’s X Caliber provides musculoskeletal, thoracic, and abdominal diagnosis using artificial intelligence based on pet X-ray images. By integrating the strengths of the two companies’ products, it is now possible to assist veterinarians with diagnosis, from auscultating a dog’s heart to reading x-ray images. It is expected to be actively used in veterinary clinics at home and abroad, as the incidence of heart disease is higher in older and smaller dog breeds.

“Through this cooperation agreement, we hope that veterinary clinics will be able to detect and treat heart disease in dogs through auscultation and X-ray images at an early stage, slow down the progression, and protect the lives of precious pets,” said Lee Jung-ho, CEO of Smartsound.

The new auscultation and imaging diagnosis AI service will be launched this year after integration. SK Telecom X Caliber’s distribution partner Covet will be in charge of domestic sales to its members, while the AI Auscultation standalone product will be sold at Smartsound’s distribution partner, Green Cross Veterinary Products. The two companies are also promoting business cooperation for the global expansion of AI integrated services.

Meanwhile, Smartsound is also accelerating its overseas expansion. Recently, business cooperation with veterinary clinics and veterinary telemedicine companies in the Japanese pet market has been decided and services are being prepared, and Japanese insurance companies are considering introducing it as a solution to streamline the animal insurance enrollment process.

Smartsound’s Skeeper, which is used on the human body, has been awarded the Minister of Science and ICT Award and the Minister of Health and Welfare Award as the first AI cardiopulmonary diagnosis solution in Korea. Currently, it is advancing its AI analysis technology through clinical trials with 10 general hospitals in Korea, including Seoul National University Hospital in Bundang and Korea University Hospital in Anam. Skeeper will be applied to the integrated care pilot project in Anyang City to support digital healthcare health services, and will be delivered to 189 diplomatic missions of 185 countries of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be utilized for telemedicine services.

[Source] : Seoul Economy (https://www.sedaily.com/NewsView/29VTV9FULD)

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[Keyword] : SK Telecom, Excalibur, Image diagnosis, AI diagnosis, Artificial intelligence, Pet stethoscope, Witherpet, Heart disease, Animal hospital

Everyone’s Lab Succeeds in AI Study to Read Abnormalities with Pulmonary Aesthetic

Stethoscope examination with different interpretations for different medical personnel, AI is expected to improve accuracy

There is a possibility that artificial intelligence(AI) will be created to listen to patients’ breathing sounds and read whether they have lung diseases.

At the world’s most prestigious voice AI society “INTERSPEECH 2023,” which will be held in Ireland in August, a research paper that analyzes the breathing sounds of patients to read lung diseases was listed. This paper is about a study that classifies major signs of lung disease such as Crackle and Wheeze to find the possibility of disease. Unlike AI models that analyze lung diseases by reading CT or X-ray images, there are not many technologies to find diseases through sound yet, so it is evaluated as a study that will bring a new approach to the medical reading field.

In general, lung sound diagnosis is conducted by a doctor using a stethoscope to directly listen to the patient’s breathing sound and find out if there is an abnormality. However, this method had the disadvantage of being subjective to interpretation, no matter how much expertise a medical person had, and its accuracy was reduced depending on the situation. There was also a risk that doctors could be infected during the treatment process.

This study was conducted to compensate for these shortcomings. The researchers succeeded in predicting abnormal lung auscultation sounds such as blisters and thousand tones using transformer models mainly used in commercialized AI models such as ChatGPT and AI technology using hierarchical labels of lung auscultation. Since the patient’s sound data is analyzed with AI, the possibility of infection can be reduced as doctors do not have to contact the patient directly with a stethoscope, and objective results can be produced with AI that has learned a lot of data. As a result of this achievement, the paper was published in INTERSPEECH, the world’s most prestigious academic society in the field of voice AI.

What is more meaningful about this achievement is that domestic office workers working for different companies and college students who are devoted to their studies worked together. The research was conducted at the AI community company ‘Everyone’s Research Institute’. Everyone’s Research Institute is a community company where several people gather to freely study common topics of interest regardless of their workplace, affiliation, or age. If you post a study on a subject, interested researchers are free to participate. Participants are diverse, including office workers, professors, and students. This study also produced results by freely gathering people interested in lung auscultation analysis and prediction AI models.

Nine researchers participated in the study, including Bae Sang-min and Kim Sung-nyeon, KAIST’s Kim Jae-chul, Kyungpook National University’s Kim Joon-woo, Dongguk University’s graduate students, Smartsound’s Cho Won-yang and Baek Hye-rim, and ‘Everyone’s Research Institute’s Son So-yeon, Ha Chang-wan and Tae Kyung-pil.

Lee Jung-ho, CEO of Smartsound, said, “The sound of the multiple and thousand sounds is the representative sound of major lung diseases. Through this study, we proved the possibility that AI can play an auxiliary role in early prevention and diagnosis of lung diseases.” He also expected, “This study will contribute to the early detection of lung diseases in the future.”

“This study is the first case of applying a pre-learned model for large visual and audio datasets to respiratory sound classification tasks,” said a researcher who participated in the study. “Currently, the accuracy of lung sound classification still exceeds low performance, but we expect the study to improve lung sound classification performance.”

[Source] : THE AI(https://www.newstheai.com)

[Keyword] : Breathing sound, lung disease, AI reading, AI stethoscope, interspeech 2023, everyone’s laboratory, Crackle, Wheeze

• Joint Research on AI Healthcare Solutions and Diagnostic Devices

Korea University’s Medical Center Industry Cooperation Group (Director Kim Hak-joon) has joined hands to develop Smartsound and digital healthcare technologies.

Smartsound is a healthcare innovation company with bio-acoustic-based disease diagnosis technology development. It is conducting clinical data collection and analysis on the largest patient heart sound and lung sound in Korea. Through this, it is developing a digital device that can accurately diagnose symptoms of various heart and lung diseases based on artificial intelligence.

Based on the research capabilities of Korea University Medical Center and the technology of Smartsound, the two institutions plan to conduct various types of joint research and commercialization for the development of artificial intelligence healthcare solutions and digital diagnostic devices.

“Industrialization of health and medical technology through R&D is a key value and strategy that our medical center aims for,” said Kim Hak-joon, head of the department. “I believe that smartsound’s digital solution development capabilities and clinical experiences of researchers at the medical center will create meaningful synergy.”

Korea University Medical Center is actively conducting joint research and technology commercialization with the industry based on mammoth-class convergence research infrastructure represented by 5 CAMPUS (Anam Guro Ansan Hospital, Jeongneung Medical Science Park, and Cheongdam Goyoung Campus).

[Source] : https://sports.donga.com/article/all/20230530/119526500/2

[Keyword] : Korea University Medical Center Industry-Academic Cooperation Group, Healthcare, Bio-sound, Artificial Intelligence Disease Diagnosis

Smartsound announced on the 3rd that it will supply a smart stethoscope “SKEEPER” to Azova Health, a U.S. telemedicine company.

Smartsound recently signed a business agreement with Azova Health. Azova Health introduces real-time stethoscope technology of smartsound to its platform. In the future, the two companies will jointly operate telemedicine platform services for telemedicine platform companies in the United States and jointly operate telemedicine platform services when telemedicine is allowed in Korea. “We have secured a bridgehead to enter the U.S. telemedicine market,” a Smartsound official said, expecting more opportunities to find partners to expand local sales of skeepers, licenses in the U.S. market, and demonstrate products with local medical institutions.

Azova Health provides medical services to about 1 million patients and executives and employees of major companies such as Walmart and Costco through its own platform. Azova Health was also listed as an innovative company in LG Electronics’ NOVA telemedicine and digital health last year.

[Source] : https://www.sedaily.com/NewsView/29O5R0QAIH

[Keyword] : Azova Health, Telemedicine, SmartStethoscope, Real-TimeStethoscope

Smartsound has unveiled a new, AI-based stethoscope series at CES 2023. The company says it’s the world’s first of its kind and features three models of smart stethoscopes, the Skeeper R1, H1 and P1.

According to the company, Skeeper R1 is the world’s first all-in-one edge AI smart stethoscope, designed to identify and monitor heart murmurs and lung sounds.

The H1 design was created specifically for remote medical treatment and home care, while the P1 is a wearable iteration that offers long-term health monitoring for users, coming in the form of a patch that can be attached to the required area.

Smartsound signed an agreement for the first wide-scale rollout of its device in December with the city of Anyang, South Korea, in a collaboration that will see 685 of the smart stethoscopes rolled out to those at high risk for heart and lung disease.

The company is also working alongside Seoul National University Bundang Hospital’s EMR system and 10 domestic general hospitals, including Korea University Anam Hospital, to gather data on the device’s performance.

“We plan to support systematic disease management of cardiopulmonary diseases by introducing an AI-based self-management system for local health care targets and chronic patients who need continuous management,” said Choi Dae-ho, Mayor of Anyang. “It will be the priming water of ‘AI smart health administrative service.’”

“In the face of the COVID-19 transition and the aging era, Anyang City will take the lead in establishing a ‘digital healthcare health service’ such as AIoT-based integrated care for the elderly and health management for chronic patients, and realizing a happy city where the underprivileged can enjoy together,” he added.

[Source] : AIBUSINESS(https://aibusiness.com/verticals/world-s-first-ai-stethoscope-unveiled-at-ces-2023)

[Keywords] : CES2023, AI Stethoscope

Smartsound Corporation will unveil three new artificial intelligence (AI)-based smart stethoscope products at CES 2023, the world’s largest consumer electronics exhibition, to be held in Las Vegas from the 5th (local time).

Skeeper R1 is the world’s first all-in-one artificial intelligence smart stethoscope equipped with an artificial intelligence function inside the device.

All digital functions can be used only with their own devices without connecting separate smartphones and mobile apps, and mounted artificial intelligence can automatically identify heart noise and abnormal lung sounds in seconds. The internal camera can automatically recognize QR or barcode associated with the patient care card and store or transmit 100,000 patient and stethoscope data 500 hours at a time. Through digital innovation, hospitals and medical staff expect to innovatively improve the primary care process of patients.

Skeeper H1 was developed as a product exclusively for telemedicine and home care.

Skeeper H1 is expected to grow into a major input device for telemedicine in the future because it can accurately measure the health status of the heart and lungs in telemedicine. It is expected that the general public will be able to easily manage the family’s cardiopulmonary and fetal health conditions at home. The sound of stethoscope measured at home can be analyzed by artificial intelligence to check the health status of the heart, lungs, and fetus in seconds and continuously monitor changes over time.

Skeeper P1 is attached to the body in the form of a wearable and provides long-term health monitoring function.

The AI solution, which determines cardiopulmonary disease with a skeeper, is developing a heart and lung disease classification model through consultation with cardiology and respiratory medicine experts at Korea University Anam Hospital.

Smartsound, which developed Korea’s first AI solution to determine heart disease with a smart stethoscope, won the Minister of Science and ICT Award and the Minister of Health and Welfare Award last year. New Skeeper products can be found in CES Healthcare Zone (#8011) and LG Electronics ESG Zone.

Source: Newsworks (http://www.newsworks.co.kr)

Keywords: CES 2023, AI, smart stethoscope, telemedicine, home care, CES healthcare zone, LG Electronics ESG zone.

Smartsound’s stethoscope for companion animals, a company specializing in smart stethoscopes, was recognized for its technology by receiving the ‘Innovation Award’ from Europe’s largest companion animal company.

According to related industries on the 31st, Smartsound announced on the 27th that its artificial intelligence (AI) stethoscope ‘WITHaPET’ for companion animals won the ‘2022 Innovation Award’ from Fressnapf Group, a European companion animal franchise company. Fressnapf Group has about 1,400 stores in 12 European countries and is the largest companion animal-related company in Europe with sales of 4.3 trillion won last year.

Smartsound’s WITHaPET is a product that applies smart stethoscope technology and is a smart stethoscope for animals that can be linked with the system of a veterinary hospital. Heart and lung sounds, heart rate and respiration rate of companion animals can be measured in real time, and auscultation data can be recorded through a dedicated app and transmitted through EMR system linkage.

In addition, the AI diagnosis service for canine cardiopulmonary disease will be provided sequentially around the world from January next year. It plans to provide a diagnosis service by providing veterinary hospitals and companion animal platform operators with a solution that can automatically analyze and diagnose heart disease, one of the causes of death in small senior dogs, with artificial intelligence (AI).