History of Medicine : The Stethoscope

In the early 1800s, doctors began to listen to patients' chests to diagnose diseases of the heart and lungs. At first, the physician put his ear to the patient's chest. One day when examining a young lady under the watchful eye of her family, René Laënnec was embarrassed to place his head right next to her breast. Instead, he listened through a rolled up a piece of paper, and found he could hear much more clearly than without it--thus the stethoscope was invented.

Laënnec, A l'Hopital Necker, Ausculte Un Phtisique (Laënnec, at the Hopital Necker, Examining a Consumptive Patient by Auscultation)
Théobald Chartran (1849­-1907)


Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Laennec

"This is How Medical Patients of the Present Should Look Like " the Warrel Co Says

           [To me, the most enthralling idea presented in the following massively important project you’re about to experience is this: “I don’t think of myself as the Patient of the Future – it is the perspective of the providers that puts me in this box of the Patient of the Future – I’m a patient of the present!” This project / video presentation is called “Design We Can All Live With” and it is about how a Minneapolis-based design firm is aiming toward a better patient-based healthcare system through technology right this moment.]
         This firm goes by the name “Worrell” and this solution session aims at a situation based in a technological world, but a world that intimately connects doctors with their patients. This presentation shows an epic talk between design professionals working with Worrell and one doctor and one patient. They of course represent the greater whole, expressing the wants and needs of the entire community.
This talk represents the past few years of Worrell talking with patients in their homes and at the medical office and hospitals about their needs, the needs of what Worrell knows are stakeholders in the medical world.           
          Worrell is an industrial design firm that works in interactive and medical technologies and has been for the past 35 years – they’ve been working on this particular project for the past four or five.
The images you see below in the gallery and later in the movie are of a set of technologies called “Pathway.” These web powered devices will not only store and keep current your medical records, they’ll aid in providing you, the patient, with helpful information like articles on your condition sent directly from your doctor.
Take a look at this video “Design We Can All Live With” and be completely inspired and excited for not the future of medical care, but the soon-to-be present!