Korion Health (“cor” means “heart” in Latin) was co-founded by Akshaya Anand ’19, MPS ’23, and Anna Li, an MD/PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University . The students aim to create an electronic stethoscope and guided user interface to reliably record heart and lung sounds without the help of a clinician.

“Telemedicine has great potential to overcome barriers and make health care more accessible to people,” Anand said. “But we are limited by a lack of tools. Physicians cannot be contacted through a computer screen. We wondered if there was a way to use technology to make the playing field more level.”

Korion Health’s devices allow patients, especially those in rural, marginalized, and low-income areas, to collect critical data at home and send audio files to their doctors before telehealth visits. It will be.

Anand and Lee learned about the pandemic after Lee noticed patients coming to the emergency room were feeling sicker than usual because they didn’t have regular treatment to monitor their chronic health conditions. We met at the hackathon “Pit Challenge,” a year after it started. This issue continues today. Provider display time will be longer.

“So many people I care about are falling through the cracks in the health care system,” Lee said. “We want to create a way for people to get the health tests they need from the comfort and convenience of their home in an affordable and accessible way.”

With advice from Pitt cardiologist Dr. Eric Duweke, the co-founders interviewed physicians, particularly telehealth providers, to understand their needs. A common theme was the benefit of data collected over time, especially when patients see multiple health care professionals.

“If a patient has a murmur, our device can help us see if that murmur is changing. That could indicate something else is going on.” Anand said. “It’s hard to remember what someone’s heart sounded like from a year ago, so being able to digitize that sound is an advantage.”

Since 2021, they have been building early prototypes and testing them in a 20-person pilot study. This feedback was incorporated into his second iteration of the device, which he plans to test this summer. They focus on making it as easy to use and error-free as possible so that the audio collected is accurate and useful to the provider. The ultimate goal is to use machine learning algorithms to help diagnose conditions based on patient data.

Throughout the development process, she has leveraged UMD resources like Startup Shell and the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship to find mentors, networking opportunities, and introductions to technology credits and discounts. Anand, who studied biological sciences and computer science, said the business side presents some of the toughest challenges, she said.

“I’ve always known that fundraising is difficult, but it’s very strenuous. I had to step outside of my comfort zone,” she says, adding that she also participated in pitch contests and started work on startups. I participated in accelerators and gave presentations to investors.

The next big hurdle is approval from the U.S. Federal Food and Drug Administration, since we are developing a medical device. Once we can bring the stethoscope to market, we hope to expand it into devices for monitoring the health of organs such as the eyes, ears, and gastrointestinal tract.

Working with Korion Health “fills my purpose,” says Anand. “I wake up every day motivated and excited to do something to help others in my community. That’s what makes all the difference.”