Last week the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ) held its annual congress on the Gold Coast.
Ashwin Ramanathan, a B Med Sci (Hons) student in the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health last year won two awards at the conference for his research on using “Digital stethoscope technology to study breath sounds at birth”.
He won the “New Investigator Award” for Best Poster in Student category and the “PSANZ President’s Award” for the best overall poster at the conference.
Dr Lindsay Zhou, a neonatal fellow in Monash Newborn, Monash Children’s Hospital also won a “New Investigator Award” for Best Poster in Neonatology at PSANZ 2019. Lindsay’s research focused on studying the characteristics of preterm and term breath sounds, again using digital stethoscope technology.
Dr Atul Malhotra, Consultant Neonatologist at Monash Children’s Hospital supervised both Ashwin and Lindsay and says that “Digital health technology and artificial intelligence are likely to play a major role in medicine in the future. It is fantastic to see various craft groups and organisations embrace this technology already.”
Dr Malhotra and his team are currently running the “Neo Auscultate” project using digital stethoscope technology in preterm infants with support from the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering at Monash University.
To read their review article on digital stethoscopes visit
