3D-Printed Stethoscope Costs 30ยข To Make, Outperforms "Gold Standard"
A Canadian doctor working in Gaza has developed a 3D-printed stethoscope that costs just 30 cents to make. Designer Tarek Loubani said he has six months of clinical data that proves his stethoscopes perform as well, or better than, top-of-the-line stethoscopes that cost $200 or more.
According to The Register, high-quality supplies like stethoscopes can set a Palestinian doctor back more than a month’s salary. As a result, many hospitals in the region operate with a fraction of necessary supplies and possess only a handful of stethoscopes.
Loubani’s stethoscope is the latest of many devices developed as part of the Glia Project, which is aimed at bringing lower-priced medical supplies to the Gaza Strip and other regions with low resources.
“We took an industry-standard setup and compared the standard stethoscope to various stethoscopes of our own, finally settling on a design that beat the gold standard Littmann Cardiology III by 3M,” Loubani told Wired.
Though the device has not yet received any official regulatory approval, Loubani said he anticipates the process to be a “cake walk” and said he is working to get a Medical Device Establishment License (MDEL) from Health Canada.
Loubani told Wired that the scope costed just over $11,000 to engineer, and he fronted the money himself. The technical specs of the scope are posted online at GitHub and are available for free. Loubani’s vision is for people to use 3D printers to build their own stethoscopes.
“The goal here is self-sufficiency, and so the plan for Gaza and other underserved areas is to have 3D printers. It would cost about as much for a 3D printer as to buy a new Littmann stethoscope,” he said.
Loubani’s team has already developed an otoscope (used to look in the ears) and a gauze-weaving loom as part of the Glia Project, and future projects include a pulse oximeter and a low-cost electrocardiogram.
“The main challenges to all of these are making devices that work, and providing scientifically proven ways to test and validate the devices,” Loubani told Wired.
An article published last year in Pharmacy and Therapeutics stated that 3D printing was poised to revolutionize healthcare, and three of its many potential benefits are cost-effectiveness, opportunities for collaboration, and “the democratization of design and manufacturing.”
“Rather than trying to reproduce parameters that are described in scientific journals, researchers can access downloadable .stl files that are available in open-source databases,” said medical writer C. Lee Ventola.
In 2014, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established a 3D print exchange to promote collaboration among researchers.
According to Loubani, his goal was to introduce the idea, and he hopes engineers from around the globe will take his design, further perfect it, and distribute it in areas with the most need.