Homemade stethoscope is not inferior to a commercial model for $ 200

Tarek Loubani

The medical equipment market has a clear pricing problem. It seems that manufacturers sell goods far above cost. At least, this conclusion suggests itself, if you look at the development of the Palestinian physician Tarek Loubani. He printed on a 3D printer a stethoscope , which in quality is not inferior to a commercial model for $ 200.

Loubani and his colleagues began work on the Glia project after 2012, when Israel launched an invasion of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian physicians began an acute shortage of medicines and equipment. They had to listen to the heartbeat of the wounded patients simply by putting their ear to their chest.

The stethoscope printed on a 3D printer became a real hit among doctors in hospitals, and not only in Palestine, but also in many other countries.
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Tarek Loubani told about his project at the hacker meeting of Chaos Communications Camp , which was held in the German city of Tsedenik from August 13-17, 2015.


Stethoscope

Loubani says that in one of the hospitals of the Gaza Strip there was only one otoscope for all (a tool for examining the external auditory canal and eardrum) and several stethoscopes. It was absolutely unacceptable. A quality western tool of this kind cost the monthly salary of a Palestinian doctor.

Therefore, there was nothing left but to make the tool on its own. Tests with the construction of the sensitivity curve for the audio frequencies showed that the homemade stethoscope even surpasses the American model Littmann Cardiology III worth $ 200 in quality.

Such high prices were formed after the invention of the modern design of the stethoscope in the early 60s of the last century and were probably connected with licensing fees to patent author David Littmann. The patents expired, but for some reason the prices did not fall after that.

Loubani is absolutely sure of the quality of a homemade stethoscope. He believes that it can be made at a cost of 4-5 dollars, and the model for printing should be distributed freely and for free, so that anyone anywhere in the world can print it if necessary.

Palestinian activists are currently working on creating other medical devices and instruments, including a pulse oximeter for non-invasive measurement of capillary blood oxygen saturation, an electrocardiograph and a hemodialysis machine (“artificial kidney”).

According to Loubani, these are the three most common and most expensive vital tools in any clinic.

The inventor published a stethoscope model on Github. He compares the Glia project with the free software movement. The doctor says that this is “Apache in the world of medicine,” and hopes that in a couple of decades self-made high-quality stethoscopes will be used everywhere.