Hereby, we proudly present our project CORELSA, an open-source remote stethoscope system for the monitoring of lung sounds. We provide a solution that allows the remote monitoring of lung sounds of patients suffering from respiratory syndromes as they are caused by SARS-CoV-2. By making the design open-source, we encourage teams all over the world to rebuild our CORELSA system, in order to relieve the pressure on intensive care wards, and increase the safety for health-care workers.

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Project CORELSA is the result of a lot of hard work by a widespread group of people. The idea behind the project was launched at the end of March, to provide a response to the pressing pandemic crisis that is COVID-19. A tremendous amount of work has been performed, to get the CORELSA system to the state where it is at right now. Next to the gargantuan effort that went into the technical implementation work, significant efforts have been performed in the fields of purchasing, medical follow-up, legal advice, funding, and communication and outreach. Therefore, I would like to take a moment to say thanks to all the people who have contributed to the project, in one form of another.

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First and foremost, I would like to thank the whole CoSys-SSP team of the University of Antwerp: Walter Daems, Dennis Laurijssen, Wouter Jansen, Erik Verreycken, Girmi Schouten, Ralph Simon, Anthony Schenck, Robin Kerstens, Rens Baeyens, Thomas Verellen, Arne Aerts, David Ceulemans, Niels Balemans, and Jonathan Cazaerck. You all have readily and eagerly taken on the challenge and performed extraordinarily well. It is through the effort that you all put into this project that the result has become what it is right now. As a professor, I can only be proud to be the supervisor of such a team, which should be the dream of any academic. I hope that you all have somehow enjoyed the experience, and that we all have learned a great deal from this exciting opportunity.

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Next to the people who performed the technical implementation, I would like to thank the people from UZA/UAntwerpen who have contributed to the development of the project: Rudy Mattheus, Philippe Jorens, Stijn Verhulst, Kris Ides and Eline Lauwers. Thank you for trusting our team with this challenge. Furthermore, thank you for giving us a platform to evaluate our system, and guiding us in the world of ICU settings and lung sound monitoring. We would also like to thank the IT team of UZA to support us with the integration of our system deep within the IT network of UZA: Filip Hens, Leo Bistmans, Kurt Geens and Maikel Beckers.

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No project would be possible without financial support. Therefore, our gratitude goes to Flanders Make: Dirk Torfs, Marc Engels and Greg Pinte and the complete board of directors. Flanders Make, which is the strategic research centre of Flanders for the manufacturing industry, has made available 1 million euro of funding in total to fight COVID-19. We received a generous grant as one of the funded projects in this initiative, for which we are very grateful. They supported us not only financially to develop this system but provided us with a sounding board as well. A special thanks goes to Linda Corstjens and Dries Hollebekkers from the Flanders Make communication department, supporting our media outreach campaign.

 

Finally, we would explicitly thank all the support we received from our own institute, the University of Antwerp, who provided significant support during this project: Walter Sevenhans, Silvia Lenaerts, Jurgen Joossens, Ann Aerts, Christa de Permentier, Peter De Meyer and Wim Holemans. A special thanks goes to Olivia Van Uffelen, who went to extreme lengths in supporting the supply chain of the equipment needed to deploy the system. Without her help, we would still be discussing with the various suppliers, who sometimes did not feel the same sense of urgency as we were feeling. Furthermore, I would like to thank Tom Bosschaerts and Fons De Mey from our technology transfer offices, who have made sure that we can launch the system with the right legal and license mechanisms in place. A final thanks goes to Thomas Huybrechts and Peter Hellinckx, who helped solving a tricky technical issue late at night.

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It might be possible that we have forgotten to mention specific individuals who have contributed, and for that I would like to sincerely apologize.

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Thank you all,