Even the best actors can't fake an abnormal heartbeat or the wheezing lung sounds of asthma — at least not without a little modern magic courtesy of Dr. Paul Lecat.
The Akron General Medical Center doctor who works with medical students and residents has invented a training stethoscope that transmits realistic heart, lung, bowel and other bodily sounds into the listener's ears.
With the click of a few buttons on a transmitter, an actor portraying a medical scenario can send the sounds of a rapid heartbeat, a clogged neck artery or a variety of other medical maladies into the stethoscope during a mock exam.
Lecat calls his invention the Ventriloscope because, as he says, ''you're throwing your voice into the stethoscope.''
''My hope is we can integrate the human interaction with the sound,'' said Lecat, clinical associate director for Akron General's Center for Family Medicine. ''What we're hoping is it will bring people up to speed faster.''
Lecat also serves as medical director of the William G. Wasson M.D. Center for Clinical Skills Training, Assessment and Scholarship at the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.
The high-tech center on
NEOUCOM's Rootstown campus is used by medical and pharmacy students, residents, nursing students and others to practice providing medical care with robotic patients and actors who portray scripted medical problems.
How it works
But one obstacle often thwarts attempts to create realistic patient situations: Sound.
Actors, for example, ''can't simulate a murmur,'' Lecat said, and simulators have limited sounds.
So about three years ago, Lecat rigged up his first rough version of what was to become the Ventriloscope by using a cheap $1 AM/FM radio, his personal data assistant and a wireless transmitter.
His contraption sent body sounds stored on his PDA to the radio, which was attached to the speaker in a stethoscope.
The concept worked — but needed improvement.
''When you bent, the sound disappeared,'' he said. ''I was trying to figure out what the next step was.''
That's when he contacted engineer Patrick O'Keefe Jr. of O'Keefe Electronics Inc. in Wellington, who designed the Ventriloscope using a special chip developed by an electronics company in Norway.
Any sound that's stored on a memory card can be discreetly sent to the ear pieces of the stethoscope by an instructor or actor during training exercises.
The Ventriloscope retails for $4,900. About 40 of the training devices have been purchased so far by hospitals and medical schools worldwide.
Groundbreaking
Dr. Roger Kneebone, an expert from London in medical simulation, said in an e-mail interview that he's unaware of any other product similar to the Ventriloscope on the market.
''I believe this could be a major advance in patient-related simulation, combining a wide range of physical signs with the interpersonal skills required in examining a human 'patient' [standardized patient],'' Kneebone said via e-mail.
Dr. Kathleen Rosen, faculty director for the Mount Sinai Skills and Simulation Center at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, said the center purchased a Ventriloscope after researching other ''smart stethoscopes,'' which need to be used on an electronic board instead of actors portraying patients.
''The Ventriloscope offered a lot more flexibility and realism than the products that I had seen before,'' she said.
The idea of the Ventriloscope and medical simulation in general, she said, is ''health-care professionals should practice before trying it out on real people.''
In some cases, customers are combining the Ventriloscope with high-tech patient simulators with computer-controlled pulses, breaths and other body functions.
Peter Rutan, a registered nurse who is certified in critical care, plans to use the Ventriloscope in combination with another stethoscope that amplifies and records physiologic sounds.
The simulators come with a limited library of heart and lung sounds, said Rutan, training coordinator of the Center for Virtual Care Training at University of California-Davis Medical Center.
''If you want to expand upon that, this is a good tool,'' Rutan said of the Ventriloscope. ''With the simulators, it frees us up from having to use only the sound the manufacturers gave us.''
Independent business
For now, Lecat and his wife, Fran, are running the business — called Lecat's Ventriloscope LLC — out of their Tallmadge home and contracting with O'Keefe Electronics to manufacture the product.
''We like being independent,'' said Fran Lecat, though she acknowledged the couple would be open to licensing the product to a bigger company in the future.
They market the Ventriloscope through word of mouth and by attending trade shows. Akron General also has been assisting with marketing efforts and providing Lecat time to work on his invention.
The Lecats are the only investors, with hundreds of thousands of dollars committed to the venture for design work, patents, testing and other startup costs.
''I'm passionate about it,'' Lecat said of his product. '' . . . It's one of those things where it has to be done because it hasn't been done before up to this point.''
Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or chpowell@thebeaconjournal.com.
