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AseptiScopeTM: Touch-Free Solution for Stethoscope Hygiene

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Frank Peacock, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, AseptiScopeTMFrank Peacock, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer Good hygiene practices are fundamental to good health. Today, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a heightened focus on hygiene to eliminate hospital-acquired infection and prevent disease transmission. While stringent protocols for cleaning of hands are in place, the doctor’s third hand—the stethoscope—continues to be dirty even today. It is surprising to know that doctors have been running dirty stethoscopes on patients for the last 115 years. That brings up the obvious question, why are the stethoscopes not cleaned? “There is no solution till date—until AseptiScope steps into the picture,” says Frank Peacock, a co-founder and chief medical officer of AseptiScope.

According to numerous studies, although doctors claim that they wash stethoscopes, it only brings down the bug contamination rate from 100 percent to 30 percent due to presence of cracks around the area where the membrane fits.

Stickers emerged as an alternative to resolve this issue. But on the flip side, placing stickers with dirty hands will again contaminate the stethoscope and require washing for 60 seconds with an alcohol swab before and after seeing every patient. Doctors need to spend a ridiculous amount of time washing stethoscopes and hence fail to do it and continue to rub dirty stethoscopes on patients.

As a replacement to conventional cleaning of stethoscopes, disposable stethoscopes entered the arena and were placed in every patient’s room.

Our solution outperforms other existing solutions by being better, cheaper, and faster in preventing a dirty stethoscope from infecting patients

But that posed a risk to the doctors because, if the first doctor using the stethoscope to examine the patient is a COVID-19 patient himself, then the next doctor using the same contaminated stethoscope gets infected. Also,all disposable stethoscopes have performance issues in terms of auscultation.

With stethoscopes continuing to act as a potential vector of infection, AseptiScope, a clinical innovation company, offers a novel and practical solution for the longstanding and critical challenge of stethoscope contamination. The company’s flagship brand, the DiskCover™ System, is an evidence-based touch-free dispenser solution, which places DiskCover, a disposable aseptic barrier, on every stethoscope prior to patient examination.



AseptiScope DiskCover System comprises a Touch- Free Dispenser and Clean Cassette™, which houses 400 DiskCover barriers. The dispensers are mounted outside every patient room just like hand sanitizers. Before entering the room, as doctors position the stethoscope in front of the dispenser, it is detected using a motion sensor and a new and clean DiskCover barrier is automatically brought in the application window. The stethoscope diaphragm is pressed against the window to place the barrier, and the entire process is aseptic.
The application is made within seconds, and the stethoscope is completely decontaminated for immediate use. “The secret is it is touch free,” states Peacock. “Our solution outperforms other existing solutions by being better, cheaper, and faster in preventing a dirty stethoscope from infecting patients.”

The AseptiScope DiskCover barrier’s performance was tested using SimMan, a well-known patient simulator in healthcare simulation. The results showed zero miss rate of murmurs causing no compromise on auscultation in contrast with disposable stethoscopes that missed one out of 10 murmurs. Likewise, when echocardiogram acoustical digital tracings between a stethoscope with barrier and without barrier were compared, there was no difference, thereby statistically proving that quality of auscultation during patient examination is not affected. The DiskCover Barrier was also tested on human specimens like spit, stool, urine, and snot and proved to be absolutely impervious to all bugs, super and otherwise.

"The AseptiScope DiskCover System outperforms other existing solutions by being better, cheaper and faster in preventing a dirty stethoscope from infecting patients"

What’s more, the DiskCover barrier costs pennies per use, which is cost favorable to the lesser effective disposable stethoscopes. For hospitals, this is a huge benefit in terms of cost and efficiency.

AseptiScope has patented its touch-free DiskCover System, and launches this year in a time when the world is battling the COVID-19 pandemic and is desperate for a solution that will significantly improve clinician-to-patient infection control. AseptiScope is truly changing the standard of care at hospitals.
- Alex D’souza
    August 14, 2020
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AseptiScope<sup>TM</sup>

Company
AseptiScopeTM

Headquarters
San Diego, CA

Management
Frank Peacock, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer

Description
AseptiScope offers a touch-free solution for decontamination of stethoscopes in a better, cheaper, and faster way. While stringent protocols for cleaning of hands are in place, the doctor’s third hand—the stethoscope—continues to be dirty even today. With stethoscopes continuing to act as a potential vector of infection, AseptiScope, a clinical innovation company, offers a novel and practical solution for the longstanding and critical challenge of stethoscope contamination. The company’s flagship brand, The DiskCoverTM System, is an evidence-based touch-free dispenser solution, which places DiskCover, a disposable aseptic barrier, on every stethoscope prior to patient examination