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Here’s what Popular Science<\/em> wrote:<\/p>\n Ultrasounds for everyone<\/strong> FastCompany<\/em> wrote:<\/p>\n Because of its ability to revolutionize both U.S. healthcare and frontline healthcare in the developing world, interest in the tech is high from a wide variety of investors. In 2018, Butterfly iQ received $250 million in funding from Fidelity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, York Capital Management founder Jamie Dinan, and Fosun Pharma. Last fall, the company began shipping to more than 20,000 medical professionals who reserved devices in advance.<\/p>\n For the FastCompany<\/em> piece, click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Business Insider <\/em>wrote a piece headlined:<\/p>\n A startup that makes a new iPhone ultrasound device, whose chief medical officer used it to diagnose his own cancer, just raised $250 million. …<\/em><\/p>\n Ultrasound is the safest and most widely used medical imaging equipment. It is used for medical imaging inside the body and can detect the presence of anything from blood flow, to tumors, to unborn babies.<\/p>\n “In almost every single disease state, there’s a role for ultrasound. It has incredible versatility,” chief medical officer Dr. John Martin told Business Insider. It’s been in use since the 1950s, but cost has made the equipment extremely prohibitive.<\/p>\n Initially, these machines ran up to a price tag of over $100,000. Now, the average ultrasound costs about $60,000-$80,000. Add that to the fact that you needed medical specialists with the expertise to capture and interpret the image.<\/p>\n “We wanted to make it cheaper, easier to capture the image, easier to interpret the image so it can become available, not only to every healthcare provider in this country, but to address the issue that two-thirds of the world right now has no access to medical imaging,” Martin said.<\/p>\n For the Business Insider<\/em> story, click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Here are two videos which will tell you more:<\/p>\n
\nUltrasounds are incredibly useful: They allow physicians to visualize our internal organs, muscles, tendons, and even the blood vessels in our hearts. But the machines are also cumbersome and expensive. Costly piezoelectric crystals must be carefully incorporated into each probe, and different areas of the body require their own probes; a high-frequency ultrasound reaches shallow tissue just under the skin, while a low-frequency one visualizes tissue deep under the skin, like the heart muscle. The Butterfly iQ is different. Instead of a piezo crystal, the device uses a far cheaper silicon chip that can generate frequencies needed for any depth. This reduces the cost of an ultrasound machine from $40,000 or more to just $2,000, putting the purchase within reach of more physicians.<\/p>\n