GUILFORD, Conn. & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Butterfly Network, Inc. (NYSE: BFLY), a digital health company transforming care with handheld, whole-body ultrasound, today announced it received a grant in the amount of $5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve maternal and fetal health. Through this grant Butterfly will provide 1,000 healthcare workers in Sub-Saharan Africa with Butterfly iQ+, the world’s only handheld, whole-body point-of-care ultrasound probe.
Complications of pregnancy represent some of the largest contributors of morbidity and mortality in resource constrained care settings. Butterfly will bring 1,000 Butterfly iQ+ probes to Sub-Saharan Africa to improve community access to medical imaging. As part of this initiative, 500 probes will be given to mid-level practitioners in Kenya and 500 will be distributed to healthcare workers in South Africa; both distributions will focus on improving maternal and fetal health.
“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,” said Dr. Todd Fruchterman, President and CEO, Butterfly Network. “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.”
“For years, the Gates Foundation has supported Butterfly’s efforts to improve healthcare in the places where it’s most needed,” said Darius Shahida, Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer at Butterfly Network. “This new grant represents an important step toward that goal in its potential to signal the transformational impact of Butterfly’s technology in some of the most remote settings.”
Butterfly Network will document best practices for point-of-care ultrasound utilization that can be leveraged to optimize the qualitative and quantitative clinical and economic impact of Butterfly iQ+ deployments across other care settings. Additionally, a portion of this grant will also be used to accelerate the launch of new maternal and fetal health capabilities available within the Butterfly iQ+ mobile application.
To learn more about the impact of Butterfly technology and to view a demo of Butterfly iQ+, visit: https://www.butterflynetwork.com.
About Butterfly Network
Founded by Dr. Jonathan Rothberg in 2011 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange through a business combination with Longview Acquisition Corp., Butterfly created the world's first handheld, single probe whole-body ultrasound system using semiconductor technology, the Butterfly iQ+. Butterfly's mission is to democratize medical imaging and contribute to the aspiration of global health equity, 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. Through its proprietary Ultrasound-on-Chip™ technology, Butterfly is paving the way for earlier detection and remote management of health conditions around the world. The Butterfly iQ+ can be purchased online today by healthcare practitioners in the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Butterfly iQ+ is a prescription device intended for trained healthcare professionals only.
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