A French national research project to the creation of an auscultation's school: The ASAP project

Auscultation of pulmonary sounds provides valuable clinical information but has been regarded as a tool of low diagnostic value due to the inherent subjectivity in the evaluation of these sounds. This paper describes an ambitious study of in the so-called ASAP project or “Analyse de Sons Auscultatoires et Pathologiques”. ASAP is a 3-year-long French collaborative project developed in the context of the News Technologies of Information and Communication. ASAP aims at making evolve the auscultation technics: by 1) the development objective tools for the analyse of auscultation sounds: electronic stethoscopes paired with computing device; 2) the creation of an auscultation sounds' database in order to compare and identify the acoustical and visual signatures of the pathologies; and 3) the capitalisation of these new auscultation techniques around the creation of a teaching unit: “Ecole de l'Auscultation”. This auscultation's school will be destined to the initial and continuous formation of the medical attendants.