A New App for the iPhone is the Heart of His Story

When Michael "Fuj" Fujinaka '07 bought a stethoscope for school, he was in the same boat as a lot of medical studentshe knew what to do with it, but how would he interpret its sounds? Instead of waiting until his third year of school to find out (the point at which he'd be working with patients in hospitals) he partnered with a programming buddy and designed iMurmur, an application for the Apple iPhone that instructs medical students on how to recognize and diagnose heart murmurs.

iMurmur has been on the market since June 2009 through an exclusive distribution deal with Apple's iTunes Store. To date, users from more than 35 countries have purchased the application, and it currently rates as a top-10 best-selling application in the medical category. The app, in fact, has even grabbed the attention of Thinklabs Medical LLC, a company specializing in digital and electronic stethoscopes. Thinklabs was so impressed by the technology it turned around and bought the rights to iMurmur a few weeks ago. (Fujinaka says terms of the sale are confidential.)

Read the San Diego Union-Tribune's Oct. 25 feature story on Fujinaka and iMurmur online.

"iMurmur fits into our mission to make the stethoscope a more powerful diagnostic tool," says Thinklabs CEO Clive Smith. "The software will improve the skills of our stethoscope user community. Professors have told us how difficult it is to teach students to use a stethoscope, well. But in this age of exploding healthcare costs, they want students to learn to think at the bedside rather than ordering expensive tests. iMurmur helps to bridge a learning gap that has confounded the medical education community for some time."

Recognizing this unmet need in the field, Fujinaka developed his vision for iMurmur. "I thought that it would be better to practice on an application than a patient," says Fujinaka, now in his third year at the University of California, San Diego. "The benefit of this application is that it allows medical students to practice, practice, practice. You can read about these murmurs in textbooks, but you need to hear them to be able to recognize them in a patient."

Fujinaka says iMurmur has particular relevance in combating heart diseaseone of the leading causes of death in the United States. Heart murmurs are seen as a prime clue for diagnosing the illness.

"While a given heart murmur can sound all sorts of ways, I chose a classic representation of each murmur," Fujinaka says. The 21 different sounds contained in iMurmur's library have names the average person would need help deciphering, but they include such central heart murmur noises as: aortic stenosis, mitral regurg, aortic regurg and mitral stenosis. In addition, the application has a customizable quiz mode for learning purposes as well as a "details" tab, giving users a concise and informative summary of what they need to know about particular murmurs, along with treatment options.

At 99 cents for the application, iMurmur can potentially benefit just about everyone in the medical profession who uses a stethoscope, including attending physicians, residents, interns, medical students, PA's, nurses, EMTs and other medical professionals.

After coming up with the idea for the iMurmur, Fujinaka contacted a developer to program the application. They struck a deal to share any ensuring profits, 50-50.

"It was the perfect arrangement for me," Fujinaka says. "While I've programmed in the past, I thought it would take up too much of my time to become great at programming in Apple's language. I provided the developer with the heart sounds, a description of how I wanted the program to flow, written details and information for each of the murmurs, and the diagrams that represent the heart sounds."

The most difficult part of bringing the application to fruition, he says, was letting go. "I learned that you have to step back and let the programmer do his magic," he explains. "Instead of trying to control each part of the app, I deferred to the expert's judgment on many aspects. My expertise is in medicine and not app development; I understood my circle of competence and I stayed inside.

"It's exciting to see that this is helping students all over the world become better at using their stethoscope," Fujinaka says. "I had a great time working on iMurmur and learned that it takes lot of work to bring a product to market. To that end, I had to constantly push myself to keep the project moving forward. Now that it's done, it's extremely gratifying to see my work helping others."

"The art of physical diagnosis is challenging for medical students," Smith adds. "Fuj and Alan developed an educational tool that's in a medium well understood by this generation of students. This approach is part of the future of medical education, and it's extraordinary that a student would address this problem so successfully."

Topics

Contact

Office of Strategic Communications & Marketing

400 N. Claremont Blvd.
Claremont, CA 91711

Phone: (909) 621-8099
Email: communications@cmc.edu

Media inquiries: David Eastburn
Phone (O): (909) 607-7377
Phone (C): (808) 312-8554
Email: deastburn@cmc.edu