Listen to your body with this digital stethoscope

Muse Diagnostics’ device can record, store share body sounds

- ANUJ BHATIA

IN SOUND HEALTH

• The device, called Taal, has USB-C and 3.5mm Aux inputs for easy transfer of sounds to your phone/PC
• It connects to an app called Surr which filter sounds based on what the doctor wants to diagnose
• Taal is available for ₹8,800 or on a 100 pay-per-use SaaS model
• Its biggest customers are telemedicine firms

A FEW MINUTES into a conversation with Sumukh Mysore and Arvind Badrinarayanan, the duo behind the Taal digital stethoscope, one thing is clear: they don't want to be called just another stethoscope maker. "We are not a hardware or a tech company, we are more of a sound diagnostics company," says Mysore, setting the tone for how the world should see Bengaluru-based Muse Diagnostics.

Badrinarayanan chips in, "We aren't just improving efficiencies in an existing process, we are creating an entirely new paradigm of medicine." Mysore, who is a sound engineer and a geneticist, recalls the first time he met Badrinarayanan, a veterinarian, in 2016 at a recording studio in Bengaluru. Badrinarayanan came to the studio to record dog heart sounds while Mysore was recording music and a joke shared between them led to develop Taal, which went on sale recently as part of beta testing.