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LONG BRANCH, N.J., February 7, 2011 – Monmouth Medical Center’s respected reputation as a leading teaching hospital has long attracted the best physicians to its professional staff.
Recently, that reputation also inspired a donation of cutting-edge medical equipment so innovative it was honored with both the Popular Science Innovation of the Year and Edison Best New Product awards.
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Allan Tunkel, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Medicine at Monmouth, discusses the Bluetooth-enabled electronic stethoscope with Internal Medicine residents, from left, Shailaja Chidella, M.D., and Muhammad Syed, M.D., as Shant and Hilde Hovnanian, who donated two of the electronic stethoscopes and Cardioscan software to Monmouth, look on. |
Longtime Monmouth Medical Center supporters Shant and Hilde Hovnanian made the donation of two Bluetooth-enabled stethoscopes, which are powered by the Cardioscan software, to the hospital. The donation was in recognition of the hospital’s standing as one of New Jersey’s top academic medical centers, as well as a part of their quest to stop sudden cardiac death in our schools.
Cardioscan software aids the health care professional in using the Bang-and-Olufsen designed wireless Littman 3200 stethoscope for the recording, display and analysis of heart sounds and other physiological acoustic signals. A next-generation auscultation, or listening, device featuring Bluetooth technology, Cardioscan wirelessly transfers heart, lung and other body sounds to software for further analysis.
The scope pairs wirelessly with Cardioscan software to allow clinicians to visualize heart murmurs, play recordings at slow speeds to hear more clearly, and save recordings for comparison to future exams.
Teaching hospitals offer advanced care that is not always available at community hospitals, according to Monmouth Medical Center’s executive director Frank J. Vozos, M.D., FACS., who notes that the Hovnanians’ donation brings another dimension to the hospital’s level of care.
“In addition to attracting physicians who are leaders in their fields, teaching hospitals are progressive, and we are committed to offering the state-of-the-art technology that helps maintain our reputation as the region’s premier academic medical center,” says Dr. Vozos, who trained in general surgery at Monmouth and practiced there for more than 25 years. “We are so grateful to the Hovnanians for this generous donation that has elevated our standing as the region’s health care innovator.”
Allan Tunkel, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Medicine at Monmouth Medical Center, notes that as a teaching hospital, Monmouth Medical Center will be able to use the Bluetooth technology to let its physicians in training hear in real time what the attending physician is hearing, helping them learn how to diagnose heart murmurs. Results can also be stored on a PC and be played back at a later time to review findings.
The scope and software together mark a breakthrough in computer-aided auscultation that has the potential to identify those at risk for certain types of heart disease, notes Shant Hovnanian, Chairman and co-Founder of Zargis Medical, the Princeton based company that teamed with Siemens and 3M Corp. to commercialize the technology. Zargis is majority owned by Speedus Corp.
“Zargis is launching a school-focused initiative in February in recognition of American Heart Month, which could eliminate the occurrence of sudden cardiac death in our schools,” he says. “In conjunction with area schools and hospitals and with educational support from national non-profit health organizations, we are working to create a template for sports physicals to identify abnormal heart sounds that could be indications for sudden cardiac death.”
Zargis is taking its cue from the American Heart Association 12-step screening process, which may help reduce sudden death in young athletes, he adds.
Zargis Medical was a co-recipient of Popular Science magazine's 2009 "Innovation of the Year" award for its Cardioscan-powered Bluetooth stethoscope. In bestowing the award, Popular Science wrote that the system has the potential to eliminate unnecessary echocardiograms and, even better, catch more of the dangerous murmurs.
Earlier this year, the technology was honored wit the 2010 Edison Best New Product Award, a peer-reviewed honor that symbolizes the drive to remain in the forefront of innovation, creativity and ingenuity in the global economy. In earning the award, the stethoscope beat out the runner up: Google’s Android Smartphone.
In addition, Zargis Cardioscan won a "red dot: best of the best" award as part of the internationally renowned "red dot award: product design 2010" competition. The red dot design award, the origins of which go back to 1955, is the largest and most renowned design competition worldwide. In 2009 the competition recorded approximately 12,000 entries from more than 60 nations. Cardioscan and the Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 are displayed in the red dot design museum in Essen, Germany, which receives more than 120,000 visitors annually.
For additional information about Zargis, visit www.zargis.com.
February 7, 2011
CONTACT: Kristine Brown
Director of Public Relations at
(732) 557-3902
krbrown@barnabashealth.org
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