Sounds are emailed:  When the "Medical Collection Option of iPhone App, "iStethoscope Pro," is switched on, the application will be configured correctly for medical collection of heart audio, and will automatically fill in the email address. By sending your email to this address you are sending your collected sound via email as an attachment to a researcher at the University of Minnesota, Glenn Nordehn.   He would like to obtain the sounds to see if it is possible for people to collect good quality sounds. Your sound will be sent as an attachment without your name on it.  The sound will be automatically embedded into an email. The sound file attachment will be removed so you may not be identified. These sounds would all then be kept in a data bank for future evaluation.

Future evaluation:  (1) initially some (but not all) of the sounds will simply be opened and listened to - so the researcher may tell if people are able to collect good quality sounds, (2) after this phase of the work the researcher may do a number of things with the sounds.  The additional things the researcher may do with the sounds is classify through listening and observing a visual created that is tied to the sound.  The sounds may be sent to artificial intelligence classifiers (a program in a computer) to see if the computer can classify the sound the same way the researcher can.  The sounds may be posted onto the web - without any personal identifiers for other interested people and researchers to download and use in any way they see fit.  When downloaded the person downloading would be asked to, when the sounds are used, to relate credit for use to the researchers at the University of Minnesota and to Peter Bentley.