BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (WAFB) – When the Purple and Gold take the field this football season, they will have a new teammate to help them as they transition to the Black and Blue.
The sports medicine team will begin using Eko Core stethoscopes on the hearts of student athletes.
“Especially with our athletes. We don’t want any harmful effects and if we can detect them early, we should definitely do so,” said Dr. Kelechi Akamiro of Our Lady of the Lake Health.
The Eko is not your father’s stethoscope. It uses artificial intelligence.
“This is not a replacement for doctors,” said Joseph Authement, U.S. vice president of sales at Eko Health.
Authement is a former LSU swimmer who said the FDA-approved, AI-powered digital stethoscope is like the Shazam of medical technology. It transmits sounds from the patient’s heart to a smartphone. LSU Athletics is the first collegiate sports program to use the tool. In just 15 minutes, the sports medicine team can detect atrial fibrillation or heart murmurs in any student-athlete during physical exams.
“It listens for sounds and matches them with regular or irregular heartbeats,” Authement added. “The sounds that would otherwise not be detected. That’s where this tool will really shine.”
The company said the tool is being used by healthcare providers in New Orleans and it hopes to expand it to the Baton Rouge area.
AI is becoming increasingly useful in healthcare. It is used in cancer therapy and colonoscopies.
“They’re obviously looking for new technologies and innovations that will make us healthier. I can only be thankful for that,” said LSU baseball player Trenton Lape.
The AI now helps players continue playing.
LSU Athletics will receive 500 AI-powered digital stethoscopes. The manufacturer is currently working on developing lung sound algorithms to detect hypertension and COPD.
Click here to report a typo.
Copyright 2024 WAFB. All rights reserved.
