Handheld Ultrasound by Butterfly Network: Faster, Cheaper, Better
08/15/23 • 53 min
Harry's guest this week is Joe DeVivo, the new CEO of Butterfly Network. The company's goal is to make it radically easier for doctors or medical technicians to perform an ultrasound exam on any part of the body, and radically cheaper for a patient to get one. The companyt makes an FDA-cleared, handheld ultrasound scanner called the Butterfly iQ. The first big thing that’s different about the iQ is that it uses silicon-based microelectromechanical sensors, instead of a traditional piezoelectric crystal element, to generate and receive the ultrasound waves. That means the device is fully digital, rather than analog. The second big thing that’s different is that the iQ transmits the ultrasound data to a standard iPhone or iPad instead of a big, expensive ultrasound cart. The doctor or technician can see the live ultrasound image right on a handheld device, and use the image to aim the sensor correctly to get the best possible picture to make a diagnosis. All of that is bringing down the cost of equipping a clinic with ultrasound technology dramatically, and over time it should also bring down the cost of administering an ultrasound exam. It also opens up the possibility of adding AI assistance to the software, so that doctors or technicians can get usable images with less training. The net result is that Butterfly is making it economically feasible to use ultrasound for diagnostic imaging in a lot more places, including clinics in developing countries where ultrasound was out of reach before due to the high cost of the technology and a shortage of trained ultrasonographers.
For a full transcript of this episode, please visit our episode page at http://www.glorikian.com/podcast
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That's it! Thanks so much.
Harry's guest this week is Joe DeVivo, the new CEO of Butterfly Network. The company's goal is to make it radically easier for doctors or medical technicians to perform an ultrasound exam on any part of the body, and radically cheaper for a patient to get one. The companyt makes an FDA-cleared, handheld ultrasound scanner called the Butterfly iQ. The first big thing that’s different about the iQ is that it uses silicon-based microelectromechanical sensors, instead of a traditional piezoelectric crystal element, to generate and receive the ultrasound waves. That means the device is fully digital, rather than analog. The second big thing that’s different is that the iQ transmits the ultrasound data to a standard iPhone or iPad instead of a big, expensive ultrasound cart. The doctor or technician can see the live ultrasound image right on a handheld device, and use the image to aim the sensor correctly to get the best possible picture to make a diagnosis. All of that is bringing down the cost of equipping a clinic with ultrasound technology dramatically, and over time it should also bring down the cost of administering an ultrasound exam. It also opens up the possibility of adding AI assistance to the software, so that doctors or technicians can get usable images with less training. The net result is that Butterfly is making it economically feasible to use ultrasound for diagnostic imaging in a lot more places, including clinics in developing countries where ultrasound was out of reach before due to the high cost of the technology and a shortage of trained ultrasonographers.
For a full transcript of this episode, please visit our episode page at http://www.glorikian.com/podcast
Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:
1. Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
2. Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.
3. Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."
4. Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."
5. Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars.
6. Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300 words long.
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That's it! Thanks so much.
Previous Episode
AHA: Ask Harry Anything!
This week Harry's guest is....Harry! We're flipping the script and giving Harry a chance to wax eloquent about AI in healthcare and drug research, the growing role of personal health monitoring devices, the unique features of the Boston life science ecosystem, the meaning of the recent downturn in biotech investment, the most common mistakes made by new entrepreneurs, and much more. This week's guest interviewer is Wade Roush, who hosts the tech-and-culture podcast Soonish and has been the behind-the-scenes producer of The Harry Glorikian Show ever since Harry started the show in 2018.
For a full transcript of this episode, please visit our episode page at http://www.glorikian.com/podcast
Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:
1. Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
2. Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.
3. Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."
4. Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."
5. Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars.
6. Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300 words long.
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That's it! Thanks so much.
Next Episode
How to make Generative AI in Healthcare Safe, with Huma.ai's Lana Feng
It’s been less than a year since OpenAI opened up ChatGPT to the general public, and less than six months since OpenAI introduced GPT-4, the large language model that currently powers ChatGPT. But in that brief time, the new crop of generative AI tools from OpenAI and competitors like Google and Anthropic has already started to transform the way we think about managing information. We’re entering an era when machines can generate, organize, and access information with a level of accuracy, speed, and originality that matches or exceeds the abilities of humans.
That doesn’t mean machines are making humans obsolete. But it does mean that organizations that deal in information need to figure out how to equip their people to use the new generative AI tools effectively. If they don’t, they’re going to get outperformed by competitors that do that better. And in Harry's view, professionals in drug discovery, drug development, and healthcare don’t quite understand the scale of the change that’s coming. They need to get up to speed right now if they want to incorporate generative AI into their work in a way that’s effective and safe.
Fortunately there are plenty of people in the life sciences industry thinking about how to help with that. And one of them is Harry's guest this week, Lana Feng. She’s the CEO and co-founder of Huma.ai, and under her leadership the company has been working with OpenAI to find ways to adapt large language models for use inside biotech and pharmaceutical companies. GPT-4 and competing models are extremely powerful. But for a bunch of reasons that Lana explains in this episode, it wouldn’t be smart to apply them directly to the kinds of data gathering and data analysis that go on in the biopharma world. Huma.ai is working on that problem. They’re building on top of GPT-4 to make the model more private, more secure, more reliable, and more transparent, so that companies in drug development can really trust it with their data and not get tripped up by issues like the hallucination problem. Anybody who wants to understand how generative AI could change practices in the drug industry needs to know what the company is up to.
For a full transcript of this episode, please visit our episode page at http://www.glorikian.com/podcast
Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:
1. Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
2. Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.
3. Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."
4. Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."
5. Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars.
6. Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300 words long.
7. Once you've finished, select "Send" or "Save" in the top-right corner.
8. If you've never left a podcast review before, enter a nickname. Your nickname will be displayed next to any reviews you leave from here on out.
9. After selecting a nickname, tap OK. Your review may not be immediately visible.
That's it! Thanks so much.
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