Eko announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared a suite of algorithms that, when combined with Eko’s digital stethoscopes, will enable healthcare providers in the U.S. to more accurately screen for heart conditions during routine physical exams. If left undiagnosed, these heart conditions can lead to stroke and heart failure.
“Our vision has been to build seamless technology that helps providers more accurately detect heart disease, the leading killer in the world, by putting the ears of a cardiologist in any clinician’s stethoscope,“ says Connor Landgraf, Eko’s Co-Founder and CEO. “Eko’s new ability to alert a provider to the presence of a heart murmur or atrial fibrillation during the standard physical exam brings that vision to life.”
Patients with valvular heart disease and AFib often go undiagnosed during the physical exam. Murmurs indicative of valvular or structural heart disease can be extremely difficult for clinicians to hear and AFib may not be detected during the physical exam. AFib is an irregular and often rapid heartbeat that is often asymptomatic and can lead to blood clots, strokes, heart failure and other heart-related complications.
Eko’s AI is able to identify heart murmurs, a leading symptom of valvular heart disease, with 87% sensitivity and 87% specificity. The AI is able to detect AFib with 99% sensitivity and 97% specificity when analyzing the 1-lead ECG tracing from the Eko DUO stethoscope. The integration of ECG into the stethoscope enables providers to quickly screen patients for the serious arrhythmia during a standard physical exam. The Algorithm also reports heart rate and QRS duration and identifies tachycardia and bradycardia, abnormally fast and slow heart rates, which can be indicative of heart disease or other health conditions such as thyroid disease.
