Sonus Microsystems CEO on BNN Bloomberg: The Future of Autonomous Ultrasound
Last month, Sonus Microsystems announced a collaboration with Medtronic to explore how autonomous ultrasound could support maternal health monitoring in Kenya.
Sonus CEO Hani Eskandari joined BNN Bloomberg to discuss the partnership, but the conversation went beyond the collaboration to explore a much bigger shift happening in ultrasound technology.
“We're building a platform that can change the way ultrasound is used,” Eskandari told BNN Bloomberg. “We're bringing ultrasound out of hospital settings and into more accessible locations, such as clinics, primary care physicians' offices and pharmacies, and eventually into patients' homes.”
The Sonus Patch™ is designed to automate the acquisition of ultrasound images without requiring a highly trained specialist to manually position and move a probe. The goal is to enable healthcare workers to perform certain scans in settings where specialized ultrasound expertise may not be readily available.
“It's basically stick and click. You can put it on the heart, press a button and get a full 3D exam. Your doctor, wherever they are, can see the images, and AI can give you specific parameters that correlate with your health,” Eskandari explained.
The first step is automating the scan itself. Looking ahead, AI could play an increasingly important role in extracting and interpreting the information collected.