Guilford Company's Portable Ultrasound En Route To Space Station

GUILFORD, CT - Last week, a Space X and NASA rocket launch to the International Space Station had aboard it a hand-held ultrasound device created by scientist Jonathan Rothberg and his Guilford digital health tech company Butterfly Network.

Rothberg’s portable, pocket-sized imaging device will be studied to see if it can help monitor astronaut health while in space.

Besides the portability of the device, Rothberg's company motes that its mission is to "democratize medical imaging and contribute to the aspiration of global health equity."

The Butterfly Network noted that its "mission is to enable universal access to superior medical imaging, making high-quality ultrasound affordable, easy-to-use, globally accessible, and intelligently connected, including for the 4.7 billion people around the world lacking access to ultrasound."

His device is being used in rural Uganda, as seen in a New York Times article. And, in Kenya "to enable universal access to superior medical imaging." The device is the "only transducer using semiconductor technology that can perform 'whole-body imaging' with a single handheld probe."

Guilford First Selectman Matt Hoey congratulated Rotherber and Butterly.

“Congratulations to Jonathan Rothberg and Butterfly iQ for making history once again!”

Rothberg, awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Obama for inventing and commercializing high-speed DNA sequencing, is founder of life science and medical device companies including the company based in Guilford.

Recall that in March 2020, Rothberg’s tech company Homodeus in Guilford, worked on the development of a home-testing coronavirus kit with the Yale School of Medicine and Penn State on a "simple kit we can make fast, and scale globally."