A clinical trial has started for a smart thermometer that could replace a stethoscope. The trial will evaluate the use of Israeli start-up OmnySense’s technology to monitor and analyse respiratory sounds.

The trial will take place at the Wolfson Medical Center.

The smart thermometer measures multiple parameters as part of an integrated device and cloud digital health information system. An in-mouth microphone within this thermometer-shaped device detects respiratory sounds and transmits them to the cloud for analysis using the company’s algorithms, to detect and analyse lung sounds indicating medical conditions.

Vital signs and other parameters measured by the current version of the device include temperature, ECG, pulse rate, respiratory rate, respiratory sounds and blood oxygenation, enabling a remote medical team to track remotely the health condition of patients at home.

Wolfson Medical Center is an Israeli hospital with expertise in paediatrics, cardiology, ophthalmology and genetics, and with experience in running clinical trials for new medical innovations.

This clinical trial is being run by Doron Menachemi, head of the internal medical department at the Brunner Institute for Cardiovascular Research, who specialises in internal medicine, cardiology and early adoption of medical devices.

The clinical trial started with a proof of concept, and now the testing of patients is underway. In this trial, the respiratory sounds as detected by the OmnySense device are being compared with those same sounds as detected using a standard stethoscope at ten locations on the chest and the back of the patients.

“The objective of the trial is to map the lung sounds as detected by a stethoscope to the sounds detected by the OmnySense device,” said Menachemi. “If successful, this will constitute a major step towards enabling remote analysis of the respiratory condition of patients at home, where the patient just uses a simple thermometer-shaped device.”