While it has been pushing antimicrobial cases for smartphones used in healthcare settings for the past few months, start-up RidRx's device offering received a lot more attention: iStetho Adapter enables users to connect old stethoscopes to an iPhone or iPod Touch. The company also developed an iPhone app, iStethoscope Pro, and suggests that users look to iPhone apps iMurmur or iAuscultate to analyze the sounds from the stethoscope better.

Medgadget posted an important disclaimer regarding the the iStetho yesterday: "U.S. FDA and other regulatory agencies are far behind the times that we live in, so they have no current policies to deal with the proliferation of mobile computing devices and their potential uses in medicine. Hence, none of the iPhone applications and attachments are classified as medical devices, so they are sold for nonmedical uses only."

(It's worth noting, however, that AirStrip OB is the one iPhone application that has received FDA clearance -- so there currently is one exception to the disclaimer above.)

Watch this video demo of how the iStetho Adapter works: