West Virginia University to Test One Heart App in New US Study
The study will determine if pediatric cardiologists can detect heart murmurs as accurately using the One Heart app remotely as they could listening to a child’s heart in-person in the exam room.
August 2020 – West Virginia University (WVU) Department of Pediatrics has awarded an internal grant to pediatric cardiologists Drs. Nita Ray Chaudhuri and Lee Pyles to test the One Heart App. Both doctors will collaborate with One Heart Health in this multi-center study to test the new telemedicine option for remote congenital heart disease screenings in the US.
Dr. Lee Pyles, a pediatric cardiologist at WVU, and Quan Ni, a biomedical engineer working in the medical device industry, are the co-founders of One Heart Health. While volunteering together in China, they noticed that many children in rural China missed early diagnosis of their congenital heart diseases (CHD) and as a result, did not receive timely surgery. They recruited Weiguang Shao, a software engineer, to develop the first version of the One Heart App. This smart phone app, when coupled with a digital stethoscope, records a child’s heart sounds. These sounds are sent electronically to an off-site cardiologist who can then identify if a CHD is present. The three gentlemen founded One Heart Health as 501 (c) 3 charity in 2017, in order to develop and promote remote analysis of heart sounds, also known as tele-auscultation, as a cost-effective solution for CHD screenings.
Since 2017, the One Heart Health team has supported their partners in China to enable CHD screenings for over 24,000 children in rural villages via the One Heart app. They published their field testing results in Pediatric Cardiology in an article entitled , “Initial Field Test of a Cloud-Based Cardiac Auscultation System to Determine Murmur Etiology in Rural China.” This was one of the few studies published that discussed the value of remote auscultation via digital stethoscopes.
Now One Heart Health is coordinating a multi-center study of the One Heart app in the United States. In West Virginia, Drs. Nita Ray Chaudhuri and Lee Pyles were among the first to sign up as investigators for the tele-auscultation study. Specifically, the study will determine if a pediatric cardiologist can detect murmurs from CHD as accurately using the One Heart app remotely as they could listening to a child’s heart in-person in the exam room.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to reduce hospital visits has become more important than ever. Developing this smart phone app for US hospitals supports long-distance rural medicine, remote clinics and medical homes in West Virginia. The ultimate goal of this study is to move beyond West Virginia and bring timely and accurate analysis of heart murmurs to any area of the world with limited access to pediatric cardiologists.
The tele-auscultation study is a major step before releasing the One Heart app in US hospitals and around the world. With this WVU grant, One Heart Health will initiate the study in West Virginia immediately. However, One Heart Heath needs additional funding to support the full tele-auscultation study in other US hospitals. Please make a donation to support this important study and help us get this important technology to patients faster. Click here to donate.
