News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel

News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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Biotech Entrepreneur Ready to Spend $100 Million to Design Cheap and Easy-to-Use Handheld Ultra-sound Scanners That Can be Used in Drugstores

Radiology poised to be disrupted as entrepreneurs work to create smaller, cheaper imaging devices that perform as well or better than big, expensive imaging systems

Handheld ultra-sound scanners that are as “cheap as a stethoscope” is the goal of a $100 million development project. Just as the clinical laboratory industry is seeing entrepreneurs pour hundreds of millions of dollars into projects intended to create miniature medical laboratory testing devices, so also is radiology and imaging a target for ambitious entrepreneurs.

The vision of biotechnology entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg, Ph.D. is to have patients take a trip to their neighborhood drugstore rather than an imaging center the next time they need an ultrasound or MRI.

Rothberg is the driving force behind a $100 million startup called Butterfly Network. He hopes to disrupt the status quo in radiology by creating an ultrasound scanner that “is as cheap as a stethoscope” and would allow physicians or other healthcare professionals to do imaging studies using a device not much larger than a smartphone, MIT Technology Review reports. (more…)

Start-up Company Hopes Its Revolutionary Hand-Held Device May Render Current MRI and Ultrasound Testing Obsolete

Venture capitalists are betting $100 million that an entrepreneur can develop an inexpensive and portable imaging device that can be used by office-based physicians

There’s a serious effort, funded by venture capitalists, to create a compact medical imaging device with the capabilities to disrupt the existing radiology profession. Developers intend to create a more accurate imaging technology that also costs much less than the expensive imaging systems in common use today.

Biomedical entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg aims to create a new hand-held medical imaging device that can make MRI and ultrasounds significantly cheaper and more efficient, reported Wired magazine. Rothberg is founder of the Butterfly Network, Inc. 

Rothberg’s goal is to make it possible for office-based physicians to use a point-of-care imaging tool that costs just a couple hundred dollars. It might also help patients in poor regions of the world gain access to imaging tests and better healthcare. (more…)

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