UltraSight Joins Butterfly Garden to Expand AI Real-Time Guidance Across Point of Care Ultrasound Devices
On June 27, 2024, UltraSight announced its partnership with Butterfly Network to integrate real-time AI guidance into Butterfly's handheld ultrasound devices. This collaboration aims to improve access to cardiac care by enabling more healthcare professionals to perform cardiac ultrasounds, addressing the global shortage of sonographers and reducing delays in cardiac testing. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, and this initiative seeks to empower even novice users to conduct echocardiographic exams. With regulatory approvals, UltraSight's AI software will be deployed on Butterfly's platform to enhance diagnostic accuracy and accessibility. This partnership follows Butterfly's recent launch of the Butterfly Garden AI Marketplace in August 2023, opening its platform to third-party developers.
- UltraSight's partnership with Butterfly Network aims to significantly improve access to cardiac care by enabling more professionals to perform cardiac ultrasounds.
- Butterfly Network's AI Marketplace, Butterfly Garden, launched in August 2023, provides a large customer base, potentially boosting UltraSight's market reach.
- The integration of UltraSight's AI software with Butterfly's platform could help mitigate the global shortage of sonographers.
- Deployment of UltraSight's AI guidance software is subject to regulatory approvals and authorizations, which may delay market entry.
Insights
This collaboration between UltraSight and Butterfly Network aims to integrate AI-driven cardiac imaging guidance with Butterfly’s handheld ultrasound devices, targeting the fundamental issue of sonographer shortages. The primary benefit lies in enabling even non-expert users to perform echocardiograms, thus expanding access to cardiac diagnostics. This could significantly reduce bottlenecks in cardiac care delivery, leading to quicker diagnostics and potentially better patient outcomes.
From a clinical perspective, the ability to predict probe positioning in real-time and guide users to capture diagnostic-quality images can help standardize the quality of cardiac imaging across various levels of clinical expertise. This is particularly impactful in areas with limited access to trained sonographers.
Long-term, if the integration succeeds, it could set a precedent for similar AI applications in other areas of imaging, promoting further advancements in AI-guided diagnostics.
The technical implementation of UltraSight’s AI guidance on Butterfly's platform leverages sophisticated neural networks to assist with ultrasound probe positioning. This integration plays a critical role in enhancing the usability of Butterfly’s whole-body handheld ultrasound devices. The use of SDKs and APIs to facilitate third-party AI developments like this showcases Butterfly’s strategic move towards creating an AI marketplace, promoting innovation within the ultrasound imaging space.
The successful deployment of this technology will not only improve accessibility but also democratize cardiac imaging by making advanced diagnostic tools available to a broader range of healthcare professionals. This move aligns well with the industry trend towards more portable, user-friendly diagnostic devices powered by AI.
However, it is important to consider the potential challenges of regulatory approvals and the required validation processes to ensure the reliability and safety of these AI-guided procedures.
Leveraging Butterfly Network's platform, UltraSight seeks to enable patients to access cardiac imaging with real-time AI guidance
UltraSight and Butterfly have partnered to increase patient access to cardiac care by enabling more healthcare professionals to perform cardiac ultrasound. Subject to regulatory approvals and authorizations, UltraSight aims to integrate and deploy its real-time AI guidance software on Butterfly's imaging platform and build the software for use with Butterfly's single-probe, whole-body handheld ultrasound system.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading global cause of death, accounting for an estimated 18 million deaths yearly. Today patients face significant delays in receiving crucial cardiac testing due to a fragmented market full of system bottlenecks, in addition to a national shortage of expert sonographers.
UltraSight's mission is to empower any medical professional, including novice users with no prior sonography experience, to confidently conduct echocardiographic examinations and capture diagnostic quality cardiac ultrasound images at the point of care. Achieving compatibility with the most prominent handheld ultrasound device companies in the market, such as Butterfly, facilitates the company's goal of increasing access to cardiac care and reducing system bottlenecks for patients.
"Joining the Butterfly Garden marks an important moment in our mission to revolutionize cardiac care," said Davidi Vortman, CEO of UltraSight. "By integrating our real-time AI guidance software with Butterfly's cutting-edge ultrasound technology, we are poised to transform the landscape of cardiac imaging. This collaboration will empower healthcare professionals, regardless of their experience level, to perform accurate and timely cardiac ultrasound exams at the point of care. Together, we will break down existing barriers in cardiac care, ensuring that more patients receive the critical diagnostics they need, when and where they need it most."
"We are thrilled to partner with UltraSight to bring their AI guidance software to Butterfly devices in an effort to mitigate the pressing issue of sonographer shortages, among other workforce challenges, impacting medical communities around the world," said Darius Shahida, chief strategy officer of Butterfly Network. "UltraSight and Butterfly are jointly dedicated to making healthcare more efficient, effective and accessible through high-quality ultrasound that's easy-to-use and globally available."
In August 2023, Butterfly Network launched Butterfly Garden, allowing third-party developers access to its proprietary SDK and APIs to build new AI applications that work in conjunction with Butterfly's imaging platform, bringing with it access to the largest point-of-care ultrasound customer base. UltraSight, with capabilities to provide more medical professionals with the ability to take high-quality diagnostic images of the heart, has the potential to close the gap between novice and skilled Butterfly ultrasound users, and is an ideal match for the program.
When paired with ultrasound devices, and following the appropriate regulatory clearance for each device, UltraSight's underlying AI neural network can predict the position of the ultrasound probe relative to the heart based on the ultrasound video stream and guide the user on maneuvering the probe to capture diagnostic quality cardiac images.
UltraSight's partnership with Butterfly follows a series of recent collaborations with other industry leaders such as Mayo Clinic and EchoNous. For more information about UltraSight, visit www.ultrasight.com. For more information about Butterfly, visit www.butterflynetwork.com.
About UltraSight
UltraSight's mission is to make diagnostic imaging more accessible by empowering medical professionals to successfully acquire timely and accurate cardiac ultrasound images anywhere. UltraSight's AI-driven software offers real-time guidance, making cardiac ultrasound accessible and efficient, which may lead to quicker diagnoses and improved patient care. In 2022, UltraSight won the Bristol Myers Squibb Improving Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Challenge as the most "innovative cardiac technology." Additionally, the company was awarded a patent for its real-time guidance solution for ultrasound devices. UltraSight's software has FDA 510(k) Clearance, is UKCA and CE Marked, and has Israeli AMAR Clearance to assist medical professionals in performing cardiac ultrasound scans. For more news and information, visit our website or follow UltraSight on LinkedIn and Twitter
About Butterfly Network
Founded by Dr. Jonathan Rothberg in 2011, Butterfly Network is a digital health company with a mission to democratize medical imaging by making high-quality ultrasound affordable, easy-to-use, globally accessible, and intelligently connected, including for the 4.7 billion people around the world lacking access to ultrasound. Butterfly created the world's first handheld single-probe, whole-body ultrasound system using semiconductor technology, Butterfly iQ. The company has continued to innovate, leveraging the benefits of Moore's Law, to launch its second-generation Butterfly iQ+ in 2020, and third-generation iQ3 in 2024 – each with increased processing power and performance enhancements. The disruptive technology has been recognized by TIME's Best Inventions, Fast Company's World Changing Ideas, CNBC Disruptor 50, and MedTech Breakthrough Awards, among other accolades. With its proprietary Ultrasound-on-Chip™ technology, intelligent software, and educational offerings, Butterfly is paving the way to mass adoption of ultrasound for earlier detection and remote management of health conditions around the world. Butterfly devices are commercially available to trained healthcare practitioners in areas including, but not limited to, parts of
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ultrasight-joins-butterfly-garden-to-expand-ai-real-time-guidance-across-point-of-care-ultrasound-devices-302184449.html
SOURCE UltraSight
FAQ
What is the significance of UltraSight's partnership with Butterfly Network for BFLY?
When did Butterfly Network launch the Butterfly Garden AI Marketplace?
How does UltraSight's AI software aim to improve cardiac imaging on Butterfly's devices?
What impact could the UltraSight and Butterfly Network partnership have on the global healthcare market?
What regulatory hurdles does the UltraSight and Butterfly Network partnership face?
