What you need to know
- The Withings BeamO is a multi-tool stethoscope that measures temperature, heart rhythm, blood oxygen, and other data.
- It can send health data to your phone or stream your heart or lung sounds live to your physician.
- It launches June 2024 for $249 / €249, after it receives FDA approval.
When you’re feeling sick, you pull out a thermometer and check your temperature. Withings thinks that isn’t enough, and wants you to buy its 4-in-1 “multiscope” BeamO — a combination thermometer, electrocardiogram (ECG), oximeter, and stethoscope — instead.
Announced this week in Las Vegas as a “CES Innovations Award Honoree,” the Withings BeamO will retail in June 2024 for $249. Withings promises it will have received FDA clearance by this time, giving you some assurance of its accuracy for heart and lung health data.
The compact handheld wand has PPG sensors and electrodes along its sides, giving you heart rate, atrial fibrillation (AFib), and blood oxygen (SpO2) readings simultaneously in less than a minute. You can either read the results on the 1.9-inch color LED display or check your Withings app later.
Aside from the traditional temperature readings you’d expect, the Withings BeamO can also function as a digital stethoscope. You place it on your chest or back to measure “acoustic sound waves through a Piezoelectric disc,” listening for wheezing or heart murmurs.
You can either record these sounds to the app to listen to later or stream live audio to your physician during virtual appointments, so they can tell you where to place the wand for the best results to detect bronchitis or asthma.
Like your Withings Body Smart scale, the Withings BeamO will support eight separate profiles, though you’ll have to manually select the profile instead of having it auto-detected by your weight. Once the data is in-app, you’ll be able to send periodic PDF health reports to your doctor
“BeamO will revolutionize the measurement of the core vitals carried out during medical visits from the comfort of one’s own home,” says Withings President Eric Carreel. “Instead of measuring these stats a couple of times a year in a clinical setting, it will be possible to assess them every day.”
Aside from the high price and the potential to give hypochondriacs a little too much power to stress themselves out, the Withings BeamO appears to give consumers and families a really useful way to self-monitor their current health, so they can contact a doctor if things turn for the worse.
