By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist – #TheIncrementalist
On this episode I talked to John Martin, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Butterfly Network, Inc. (@ButterflyNetInc) who is revolutionizing the traditional practice of medicine by adding imaging capabilities to the doctor’s tool bag earlier in the diagnosis and treatment process of patients.
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John’s career started in vascular surgery where he found his ability to bring about positive change to patients’ lives limited by the inability to get to them early enough. To help bring better screening and diagnosis to patients he started a foundation to deliver free screening and education for cardiovascular disease to the community using the available tools at the time to allow earlier diagnosis and subsequent treatment to improve outcomes. John is also patient number one for this innovation which was able to bring an earlier diagnosis to a lump he found on his neck that would likely have gone undiagnosed or treated. Instead, he took the early prototype and applied it to his own neck and was able to identify metastatic cancer allowing him to get treated earlier.
We discuss the steps in innovation that took place that reduced a complex multi-system tool and put it on a chip allowing for easier and more cost-effective access, replacing the existing larger more expensive, and less accessible systems with a single multi-function chip sensor that attaches to your phone. With this technology, the potential to bring this imaging capability to the bedside and into the homes of people starts to become a reality.
Listen in to hear how this technology is bringing an inflection point in medicine that allows the use of advanced imaging capabilities at the point of care and how they are accelerating the advancement of skills necessary to make the technology useful to as many people as possible. As you will hear, this even includes patients and the potential to see these capabilities throughout the world and in communities and the home.
About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.
This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.