Telstra doesn't just "do telephones" according to Deena Schiff, Telstra Group MD — it seems it's also got its eye on the health space. This week in Sydney, the telco has been showing off the latest health tech from its partners, including a wireless stethoscope and remote monitoring for aged and disability care.
According to Edward Simmonds, Alcatel-Lucent's applications business development director, traditional stethoscopes are 20 years old and haven't seen much evolution. Diagnosis using analog stethoscopes is "very subjective", he said, with the older models making it difficult to filter out ambient noise.
This Alcatel electronic stethoscope measures heart readings and also picks up ambient sound readings using a microphone. These are sent via Bluetooth — the blocky device in the centre enables the Bluetooth — to a device, PC or mobile, which sends the reading to a database. The database then filters out the ambient noise from the heart readings which then can be projected onto a screen, allowing doctors to "see" the beats.
