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…)
