Recognising doctors could be much harder in future. Moves to get rid of the white coat are already progressing in the UK and now it seems MP3 players could replace the venerable stethoscope (Telegraph, AFP, Times, CanWest, The Canadian Press). Using players’ built in microphones is as good if not better for listening to chest sounds than using a stethoscope, according to research from the University of Alberta in Canada.

“The quality, clarity and purity of the loud sounds were better than I have ever heard with a stethoscope,” Neil Skjodt, a respiratory medicine expert from the university, told the European Respiratory Society’s annual congress in Stockholm.

Skjodt was browsing in a store a couple of years ago looking for an electronic microphone and decided to use one built into an MP3 player. “That’s when I had my eureka moment and realized [the microphone from the MP3 player] was far better than anything I was carrying around in my pocket,” he said (CanWest). Another bonus of using digital music players is recordings can be sent to other doctors for a second opinion. This could be useful given previous research suggests some medical students have a “woeful lack of stethoscope skills” (press release, study).