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September 29, 2011 8:22 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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It's the app that never stops! I've been asked for permission for my iphone app iStethoscope
Pro to appear in the "Yearbook for Physicians and Dentists," which is published annually by a
German savings bank at quite a large scale: 50,000 copies. In the chapter on "Trends and Future" this
year, there will be a section on Medical Apps which features my little app. Details of the yearbook are
online here: http://www.rebmann-research.de.
I also just gave a talk at a NERC-funded Mobile App Workshop, held at 86 St James' Street in
London. It was filmed, so you may be able to find the talk online sometime in the future. Details of
the event here.
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August 19, 2011 8:06 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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I've been asked to be a consultant on the IT Future of Medicine EU
Flagship project proposal team. This is an exciting vision of the future of medicine, where
computers will be used to model all aspects of patients to provide doctors with personalised
predictions of likely illnesses for their patients. The flagship, if funded, will be something of the scale
of the Apollo Space Programme - integrating data and models with the latest high performance
computing, cloud computing and mobile computing technologies. My experience in modelling, for
example as described in the book On Growth, Form and Computers (and in the work with
many of my PhD students) and medical computing - for example, through the iStethoscope
Pro app should hopefully be of some benefit!
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July 30, 2011 1:56 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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My iphone app iStethoscope Pro is in the media again, this time appearing as a short
piece in the BBC World TV Healthshow, series 1, episode 2. Rockhopper TV films this show in the new Cancer
Research building in London. Although it's broadcast all over the world with audience figures more
than 200 Million, it's not shown in UK and most of USA, so if you can't find it online on
Rockhopper's website, here's a link to the iStethoscope
segment.
iStethoscope Pro is also being featured next month in Freundin magazine a fortnightly women's lifestyle
magazine in Germany. Many thanks to everyone for their interest!
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July 27, 2011 10:17 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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I created one of the first medical apps for the iPhone - iStethoscope - back in 2008,
and it's one of the few that still receives significant media attention and downloads each
month. But things are finally changing in North America as the FDA have released draft guidance on regulations for medical apps. These
regulations look set to restrict many iPhone apps in the future. I've always tried to make it
clear that my app is intended as a demonstration of the technology and as a way to promote
awareness of healthy hearts for the general public. Just as functioning toy stethoscopes are
sold in USA without FDA approval, so I would hope my app could be sold in the same way. In
the meantime I am working with a medical device company to produce a new version of the
app designed specifically for use in medicine.
However, as we discussed in the recent nat
ure.com blog these new regulations may have a dramatic effect on the future of
medical iPhone apps. It's conceivable that my own app may be classed as a medical device
and I'll be forced to remove it from North American stores (I hope not all stores worldwide).
It's also conceivable that an over-strict interpretation of the regulations may stifle innovation
in the future. So while we welcome regulation of apps that are intended to be used for
diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of disease, I hope this will not restrict the diversity of
developers of medical apps, for their creativity now may lead to life-saving devices in the
future.
What happens next? Only time will tell.
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June 17, 2011 12:35 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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UCLAdvances was hosting a one week course on mobile apps (as part of RBS, IOIT Interreg and
Capital Enterprise sponsored events). On Thursday I was invited to chair a panel discussion for them
on app development. It was a fascinating experience, with some very interesting speakers:
Kenton Price - Director and Chief Architect - Little Fluffy Toys Ltd, Luke Whittaker - Director -
Illustrator and Animator - State of Play, Georgina Mackenzie - Director Toytek - Board Member TIGA, Kieran Gutteridge - CTO and Co-Founder of Interhand
I know I learned a few interesting things from these successful app developers (although it was
nice that I seemed to be the only one who'd had a number 1 best selling app!)
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May 31, 2011 1:08 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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I'm now supervising research projects on iPhone apps, and one of my students, Ariel Elkin, has
found some very interesting information about iPhone microphone frequency responses. See these
pages for details:
Microphone frequency response for the iPhone 4
Microphone frequency responses for the previous iPhone:
What these curves say is what my feedback for the iStethoscope app has been suggesting: the
original iphone had a poor built-in mic, the 3G had a very impressive mic (look at the low
frequencies), the 3GS had a worse mic (iPad similar), and the iPhone 4 is slightly better than the
3GS.
Perhaps the most surprising result is that the inline mic provided with the white earphones
may be better than we thought. According to those charts it should be better than all of the built
in mics! The problem may be with the earphones themselves - they can't play the low frequencies
back properly, so you just can't hear what the mic records. So one option if you're using a device
with a worse built-in microphone compared to the iPhone 3G is to use the inline mic from the
white headphones to gather the sounds, then use better headphones to listen to what you just
sampled. Of course if you're using an iPad you can plug a USB mic into the camera connection kit
and have great quality sound that way. Reports
suggest that you can't do the same with the iPhone, however.
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May 22, 2011 12:46 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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After a little queuing in USA, I was able to purchase a new white iPad 2. It's a lovely device and
I'm using it more than I was expecting to. Another unexpected bonus is that my iStethoscope
Pro app works perfectly on this device. Admittedly it's rather awkward to use the built-in
microphone, but it's quite possible to use the inline microphone with the white iPod earplugs.
Also, if you happen to have the camera kit for the iPad, you can plug in a USB microphone and
use that. (Note you may have to alter the amplification and filtering settings to suit your specific
microphone.) 
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April 20, 2011 6:25 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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Interest in my iphone app iStethoscope continues. I recently visited Portugal to chat about
research on auscultation with the groups at the University of Porto, and give a talk to them. There's
also another mention in a magazine, this time the German BW Bulletin, Das Servicemagazin für Ärzte
und Zahnärzte, which is doing a feature on medical apps.
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February 28, 2011 12:43 AM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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The number of downloads mysteriously rose again for my iphone app iStethoscope
Pro
and I had to search the web to find out why. It turns out that it was mentioned in the
feature by medicaldevice-network.com on the top ten medical devices of 2010. It also
appears in the printed copy of the medicaldevice-network magazine, viewable online here. I do remember being contacted about this a couple of
months ago. I had to make it clear that the app does not constitute a medical device
(although we are in discussions with Apple and others about how to achieve this) and so did
not qualify for their list. Nevertheless, they decided to mention it anyway! I am honoured
they have done so.
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January 31, 2011 1:49 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
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To my surprise I have been nominated by my Head of Department at UCL for the 2011 UCL Awards for
Enterprise, because of my various entrepreneurial activities over the years. These include
the iStethoscope iphone app which is currently being developed into a medical product, my
various consultancy and popular science book writing activities, and encouraging my old students
such as Siavash Mahdavi with their companies, such as http://www.within-lab.com/
I don't suppose I'll win, but it's nice to be nominated!
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