Guilford, Connecticut-based Butterfly Network will provide 1,000 healthcare workers in Sub-Saharan Africa with its Butterfly iQ+ handheld, whole-body point-of-care ultrasound probe with the funds from the grant provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The initiative will improve community access to medical imaging as complications of pregnancy represent major contributors to mobility and mortality in resource-constrained care settings, according to a news release. Butterfly will provide 500 probes to mid-level practitioners in Kenya and another 500 to healthcare workers in South Africa with both distributions aimed at improving maternal and fetal health.
Butterfly Network will document best practices for point-of-care ultrasound utilization that can be used to optimize Butterfly iQ+ deployments across other care settings, while a portion of the grant will also help accelerate the launch of new maternal and fetal health capabilities within the platform’s mobile application.
“Many places in the world, especially low- and middle-income countries, are diagnostic deserts, leaving practitioners with virtually no imaging modalities to aid in the diagnosis and subsequent treatment of patients,” Butterfly Network CEO Dr. Todd Fruchterman said in the release. “At Butterfly, we’ve long envisioned and innovated for the next generation of point-of-care. With this grant, we take another important step toward improving worldwide access to medical imaging and will also demonstrate how mid-level practitioners can meaningfully enhance care for pregnant women and their unborn infants.”
