December 17, 2025 • 65 mins
Video Episode Available on YouTube!
Gulfcoast Ultrasound Institute YouTube Channel
On this episode of The Sonography Lounge Lori and Trisha are joined by our guest Luke Baldwin, the VP of Global Marketing at Echonous to talk about AI being developed for use in Ultrasound. This episode is packed full of information regarding all areas of ultrasound especially POCUS. This episode will get the wheels turning on how AI could be used in your practice setting,
For more information on Echonous and the Kosmos System: Click Here
CME and Cross training resources:
Gulfcoast Ultrasound Institute (Training materials and programs): www.gcus.com
Certification Agencies:
American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM): https://www.abem.org/public
Sonographer / Physician: American Registry of Diagnostic Medical Sonography (ARDMS): www.ardms.org
Physicians: Alliance for Physician Certification & Advancement (APCA): www.APCA.org
Point of Care Healthcare Providers: Point of Care Certification Academy (POCUS): www.pocus.org
Sonographer / Physician: Cardiovascular Credentialing International (CCI): www.cci-online.org
Find an accredited long term Ultrasound Program: https://www.caahep.org/Students/Find-a-Program.aspx
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Recording from the Sunshine CitySt.
Petersburg, FL overlooking beautiful Tampa Bay, this is the
Sonography Lounge. Sponsored by Gulf Coast
Ultrasound Institute. This podcast is dedicated to
medical professionals and patients around the world
interested in diagnostic and interventional ultrasound.
(00:25):
Our podcast will discuss everything ultrasound from news,
trends, career paths, new technology, and industry
updates. Hosted by Lori Green and Tricia
Rio of Gulf Coast Ultrasound Institute, they bring over 4
decades of experience in the ultrasound profession and are
here to guide you through this journey.
Now sit back, relax and enjoy. Hey everyone, and thank you for
(00:50):
joining us today on the Stenography Lounge where we talk
all things ultrasound. I'm Tricia Rio and I'm joined
with my Co host Lori Green. Hey everybody, happy to have you
here. All right, so we all know
ultrasound is a versatile tool with increasing access and
growing utilization, especially as a first line imaging
technique for many practice specialties.
But as fast as ultrasound has expanded globally, AI related
(01:13):
technology has too expanded at an unprecedented rate in the
healthcare industry because it excels at identifying complex
patterns, can provide quantitative assessment
automatically, and it results ina more accurate and reproducible
result. So in today's episode, we're
going to focus on integrating AIin ultrasound, and we're happy
(01:34):
to have with us today Luke Baldwin from Echo News Join us.
Welcome, Luke. Welcome.
Yeah, thanks for having me. So Luke, you've spent 15 years
in point of care ultrasound managing the entire spectrum of
marketing from content creation to brand management to product
management, both at Soundosite and Phillips.
And now you lead marketing and product management at Econus as
(01:55):
the Vice President of Global Marketing.
So why don't you just start witha brief overview of Econus and
tell us a little bit about the company?
Yeah, sure. You know, I think in, you know,
I like it. Like you pointed out, I've been
ultrasound for a while and I think what I love about the
space is, you know, as as a marketer, as a, you know,
(02:18):
product theater, the goal is to solve problems or to introduce
people to a solution to a problem that they have.
And as a problem solver at heart, for me, the ultrasound
space is just an amazing, an amazing opportunity where you're
solving problems that are actually helping people's lives.
(02:40):
And so what's, what's interesting about Econos and you
know, I joined after they, they were well on the way, had a
product and all this stuff. But what was really interesting
about joining Econos is the problem that they're solving,
You know, we're solving it in a brand new way.
We have the, the technology thatthat we've developed is really
(03:03):
defining a whole new category ofpoint of care ultrasound.
So historically your your legacypoint of care ultrasound
systems, your cart based systemsare going to have all the
features you need, but they're going to come at a price and
(03:24):
they're not going to be as portable as let's say handheld.
And your traditional handheld systems these days you're going
to have, you know, low cost, highly portable, but you often
compromise on image quality or capabilities.
And So what we've done is compressed all of those into one
device where you have something in a handheld form factor.
(03:46):
So ultimate portability at a handheld price point, but it has
the capability set of your highest end point of care
ultrasound systems incorporatingCW Doppler PW and then layering
on top of that an incredible problem solving technology
called AI to, to make that very,very accessible to the newest
(04:09):
users. And so, you know, that's the,
it's an incredibly exciting company to be a part of.
I would agree with that, Yeah, it's a good time to be an
ultrasound. Absolutely.
It is, yeah. And, and yeah, the portability
and versatility and the capabilities of the system is,
(04:30):
is really important and everybody has a different need
and the in the environment that they work in.
So it's nice when you can have asystem that be is able to offer
you the flexibility that you might need in different
scenarios. So yeah.
Right. And.
So to be able to put it in your pocket.
Yeah, exactly. Nice.
(04:51):
So you're, you're right, this the point of care ultrasound
market is very exciting and it'sreally expanded the the
capability of being able to effectively treat patients in a
more expedient manner and that really helps to result in more
positive patient outcomes. So it's exciting to be able to
(05:12):
work with you and others just to, you know, bring that
technology to our medical professionals so that they were
able to provide higher level of patient care.
So, yeah, so in terms of your system having AI, we wanted to
kind of feature that and today'spodcast, So why don't we start
out with you? I'm just telling everybody about
(05:34):
what is the point of AI and ultrasound?
What's the benefit of that? Yeah, I love this question.
And I think, you know, it's something in this era we need to
be introspective about. I mean, AI is exploding.
And so you have to ask yourself,you know, is, you know, what is
the point? Is it just to sort of get on the
(05:56):
bandwagon and just say, hey, we have AI too.
Is it just a sneaky way to made it make extra money?
You know, what is what is AI? What what is the what is the
point of it? And it really, for us, it goes
back to problem solving. AI is a tool just like our
computers or the Internet or, you know, the wheels on your
(06:20):
car, they're a means to, to a bigger and more important end so
that it's not an end in itself. So for us, you know, as we
really reflect, reflect on what our, our vision is as a company,
I've been struck, you know, and all, and, and every company I've
been in, we, we have these, these conversations where we'll
(06:42):
sit around as an internal team and we're, we'll think about the
product. We'll think about our users, you
think about the various physicians and clinicians around
the world. We think about ultrasound and
what's the point of ultrasound. And often we, these
conversations go back to a time where one of us will recount an
(07:04):
experience we had at a hospital where a loved one was seen by a
doctor and they didn't have ultrasound or they didn't use
ultrasound. I remember one time we were in
the hospital, my son had extremeabdominal pain and I've been in
ultrasound for years. I'm like, all right, guys, you
know, where's the ultrasound? Why aren't you using what you
(07:25):
know, go look inside, you know, and I pointed out they had AI,
think it was a turbo or something down the hall.
And I said, Hey, can you take a look?
And they're like, oh, the, the person who uses that isn't here
on shift. It was this moment of like this
gap of you, you, you'd know about this great tool that can
give you so much information dynamically in real time safely
(07:48):
with no radiation. And you know, you know that it's
there and it's, and it's not being used.
And so we sort of distilled thatidea into like this, this vision
for us is, you know, can we helpto create a world where no, no
one has to say, I wish my doctorwould have used ultrasound.
(08:10):
And it just kind of creates that, that, that I guess a
connection to, to our our physicians, but also to their
customers, the patients. And so how you know, how do you
do that? Right.
So the question is about AI. What, what's, what's the point?
The point for us is how can we lower that barrier to ultrasound
(08:33):
adoption? And there's a number of reasons
why people don't use it, but thenumber one reason is education.
That's in every study I've seen,every survey I've seen the, the
thing that prevents someone fromusing ultrasound or, or delays
them from kind of crossing that threshold is I don't know how to
(08:54):
use it or I don't know how to use it well.
And so you, you break that down.You say, OK, education is a big
barrier to ultrasound adoption. That's why my son wasn't seen,
you know, they didn't use it on,on my son in the hospital.
So what is that made-up of? And, you know, we think about it
in three different ways. The first part is how do you use
(09:15):
the ultrasound system? What are the buttons mean?
What is the transducer? You know, all that?
And then it's how do you get theright image?
How do you look at the, the image that you know, what
window, you know, how do you, how do you know what, what
you're seeing on the screen? And, and then the last part is
(09:36):
interpretation. How do you, is that a normal
heart? Is that an abnormal heart?
Is that the bowels I'm seeing? Is that something else?
And so we look at, you know, there's a lot of ways in the
industry you can, you can help overcome that barrier.
You could just, you know, muscleup and and provide a whole bunch
of education and some companies have done that.
(09:59):
You can make your system really easy to use.
That should be table stakes at this point.
You know, ultrasound system should be easy to use, but what
else can you do? And that's where AI comes in for
us. It's, that's one of the big, one
of the big reasons we use AI as a, as a problem solving
technology is to help novice users become more proficient and
(10:23):
so on. You know, with, with the
technology that we've used, someone can, you know, put, put
the, the, the probe on the heartif they want to look at a
parasternal lung axis. You put the probe on the skin
and now it, it immediately starts telling you where to,
where to place the probe to get that window and then how to
optimize the image. So it'll tell you, you know,
(10:45):
guide you and where to put the probe.
And then it'll grade your image and tell you that's a good
image, that's diagnostic qualityor that's not diagnostic
quality. And so you can kind of hone in
on, on what a good image is. And then also at the same time
it's telling you what the anatomy is, it's labeling it.
So for a new user who's trying to Orient themselves to, to
(11:07):
think of the image as a slice, you know, 2 dimensional slice of
the anatomy helps them to Orient, OK, I've seen this in a
book. I OK, that's the right
ventricle, that's the left ventricle.
So it helps with that second step, you know, it doesn't help
with interpretation, but it helps them to become more
proficient to know if, if, if I need, I know I want to look at
(11:30):
the valve. I want to look at this valve in
the, in this view of the heart. How do I get there?
The system will help to, to overcome that barrier.
And so, you know, we've several of us at the company who are not
clinical have trained ourselves with this very same AII know
exactly where my parasternal lung axis window is now by
muscle memory. I don't need the, I don't need
(11:53):
the AI to, to help guide me. But I think that's, that's one
key way that we employ AI and, and the reason we do that is to
really help new users to become more proficient.
And I think the other big barrier that we can help with
with AI is allowing expert usersto be more efficient.
(12:18):
So there's a lot on a system, onany given system, you let you go
back 1015 years ago and there is, you know, every capability
of the system was visualized as a button on the interface.
Now with touch screens, you don't have to visualize
everything. But then what do you do with
those buttons? How do they find that
functionality? And with AI, if as long as we
(12:41):
know, as long as the machine knows what the user's trying to
do, it can take away a number ofthose steps, a number of those
reasons why someone might have to interact with the with the
system. So like an ejection fraction is
a great example where you know you decide you want to do an
ejection fraction, it'll guide you to get the apical 4 chamber,
(13:04):
it'll capture that image automatically.
It'll guide you to the apical 2 chamber, it'll capture that
automatically and then run the report.
So as far as button pushes, you push auto EF and that's
virtually it from there on out until you until you're done.
So the impact there in terms of efficiency is you go from a two
(13:26):
to three minute exam on a legacycart system down to, you know,
less than 20 seconds. And again, that's it's not AI
for the sake of AI. It's, you know, I don't, I don't
pick up an ultrasound system as a, as a clinician to just to do
an ultrasound. I, I pick up an ultrasound
(13:48):
system to answer a question. So if we can help them get to
the question faster with this tool, then you know that that
impacts patient care in a in a pretty profound way.
Yeah, especially when it's urgent care.
So you guys are awesome. You support our programs by
providing systems. We've had the pleasure of
working with several of your systems and watch the
(14:08):
development over the last three years, I would say three to four
years of the AI technology and constantly updating us in our
systems to make sure that we have the latest and greatest.
And I have to say, using it in aeducation aspect, it's
incredible to see how it really helps with the confidence.
And so you have somebody who's scanning and they're looking at
(14:30):
an abdomen or they're looking atthe heart and they're not really
sure of the anatomy that they'reseeing on the image.
And then all of a sudden it justpops up and auto labels and
they're like, oh, wow. And then you just see, OK, OK.
And then it just, it really helps to start build that
confidence. And by the time I'm working with
them the following day on maybe a different system, I just see
the level of confidence that hasincreased both from obviously
(14:53):
the hands on skills training, but also because of the ability
to have that system. They're kind of walking them
through that scan and providing them that feedback without me
having to constantly be pointingto structures and telling them
they're just looking at the screen and interpreting what
they're seeing. And it's just, it seems very
just natural for them. And so I definitely have seen
(15:13):
that as a useful tool in education as well.
So. That's cool.
I mean, that's great to hear. You know, we're we're not always
able to to be in the room in those situations.
And you know, we hear it anecdotally, but it's it's it's
so validating to hear, you know,that that feedback.
I mean, it's certainly been beenour experience and and I think,
(15:35):
you know, some of us being proven out to and and some
recent research that's come out this year, you know, institution
LED stuff. So that Stanford, they doctor
Kumar, Andre Kumar did a really interesting study comparing a
group of new users. They had a a non AI system,
didn't provide any guidance, didn't provide any, you know,
(15:56):
instruction. And then they had an AI group
which was they were using the Cosmos product and the numbers
were striking in terms of image quality, scores were higher in
the AI group. Time to acquisition was faster.
They were more accurate in in diagnosing the the diastolic
(16:19):
dysfunction. I forget the word but diagnosis.
That sounds right. Was more accurate as well.
And you know, the only difference was they had the same
training, you know, all new users.
The only difference was was AI. So, and those are the, those are
the types of things that start to count, you know, can they get
(16:40):
the image quicker? Can they get a better quality
image? That's where again, it's they're
using the technology to answer aquestion.
If that question is answered quicker, if it's answered more
accurately, These things really matter in healthcare.
So that's that's, you know, that's why we're in the in the
AI game for sure. Especially even in in markets
(17:02):
too, like, you know, like we were talking earlier about EMS
and pre hospital, but also in family practice, you know, these
family practitioners have only several minutes dedicated to
each patient and stuff. And when you, you know, I think
a big misconception is that you're going to spend more time
with ultrasound when in fact you'll actually get your
patients in and out faster, especially utilizing technology
(17:22):
like this that you can get in, get them out the same day with
answers in the next step in thatdiagnosis.
And I always tie that back to reimbursement because patient
satisfaction scores are a huge part of reimbursement.
And think about how much happy you are when your physician put
the probe down on you, talk to you about what was on the
screen, what they're seeing saidI don't need to order a CAT scan
because I see this, our next step is this.
(17:45):
And I just think about what thatdoes for patient satisfaction,
not only outcomes, but satisfaction, because at the end
of the day, everybody knows in healthcare we have to make
money. So having higher patient
satisfaction means higher reimbursement.
Yeah, and you think too, you know, that there's the time of
the exam and you know, you do hear there's a lot I don't have.
You know, I've got 3000 patients.
(18:06):
I have 15 minutes with each one.I don't want to be fooling
around with the with an ultrasound system.
And you know, there's that, thatper exam time that that people
are afraid of taking too much ofthat.
And can I be proficient enough? And the other thing that that is
interesting, you mentioned patient satisfaction.
I mean, being able to get the answer right then and there is
(18:29):
enormously satisfying for patients.
And it's as well for, for the physicians, once they get to
that point, it's like, Hey, I can, I can get to that treatment
plan way sooner or I can have confidence again, back to the
confidence piece. And whether or not, you know,
if, if, if this person comes in and they're a little short of
breath and there's, there's an, and you know, and I suspect
(18:52):
something's going on with the heart.
And you take a look and you run an EF and you, you get a couple
calculations to decide, hey, yes, for sure we want to get a
full echo. Their EF is a little low or no,
or, you know, their heart's totally fine.
We don't have to order a full echo because that could mean
weeks before you could get get in for that full echo
(19:16):
appointment. Then you got to wait for the
results and you got to make another appointment with your
doctor. But if you can shortcut that as
a family practice practitioner, you know, it saves your patients
so much extra time and so much extra money and it saves the
system as well. I mean, there's, there's only,
(19:37):
there's a set number of, of cardiac stenographers, you know,
and I heard recently the number one reason that a full echo is
ordered is to get an ejection fraction.
So if, if you could, you know, there are patients who really
need that full echo. And if you can keep people out
(19:57):
that don't, that also helps the whole system and helps other,
you know, patients who really need that, that more advanced
exam to make sure that they havea spot.
So there's a lot of these thingsthat are kind of tied together.
Absolutely, which is bedside ultrasound in general, you know,
(20:18):
with or without AII mean the benefits of that are so far
reaching and, and can be life saving at times.
And so utilizing that, if you have a system that has AI, then
you know, that can augment your,your learning curve and help you
to feel a little bit more confident and have your
confidence to where you're, you're willing to actually
(20:39):
integrate that into clinical practice on a more frequent
basis than just here and there. And if you're only doing and
every once in a while, then you know, like anything, practice
makes perfect. So, but like Tricia said, you
know, we in our education environment as well, it
definitely is augments the educational experience as well,
because that's just reinforcing to the learner what they've had
(21:01):
taught to them and their didactic and their other
scanning skill set, you know, sessions.
And they, if they have a system with AI when they go back home,
the fear level is a little less because they know they're going
to have that capability to help them to re to reinforce that
this is the appropriate anatomy.I am getting the appropriate
(21:21):
view and and so forth. So, and to help with some of the
measurements that can be a little bit, you know, daunting
to some people. So it is a nice, definitely a
benefit to having that. Yeah, something I hear about a
lot, I'm curiously, you know, hear your, your thoughts on this
and the and the being educators.But you you hear a lot the, the
(21:44):
process to learning ultrasound is it's obviously it's a user
dependent technology. So you, you have to know, you
know those three things, how to use the system, know what you're
looking at and then you don't know how to interpret it as
well. But a lot of these clinicians
are on the job and so learning on the job is tough.
(22:05):
And so, you know, you think might go to a weekend workshop
or a course or something like that.
They go back into their practiceand there's this, this moment of
crap. That's exactly.
What it sounds like. Is this something that you hear
(22:25):
a lot about? Well, especially from the, the
very, you know, the very new first time they ever have a
transducer in their hand. There's, there's, you know,
there's fear in their heart for sure, you know, But you know, if
they, if they are able to devotea couple days to at least
getting the core basics to go back, we call it the friends and
family plan. You know, the more you scan, the
(22:47):
better you get. And you know, if you have a
system that has some extra benefits to help you be more
comfortable in what you're seeing and what's normal and
what's not normal and is that anappropriate view and that sort
of thing. It's definitely going to help
them to accelerate their learning curve to where they do
feel pretty comfortable just utilizing it every day.
(23:09):
And most of the time what we hear is I don't know how I've
gotten along without this for solong.
Now that I know, you know, I cango back and I can start scanning
and utilizing it for this, that and the other.
And then once I've done that, I'm now using it for other
things and it just starts, yeah,the utilization of it just
(23:31):
starts growing exponentially because they see the value.
We've become almost obsessed with it.
You're like, I can do this now. Now I want to try that.
Well, do you think I can learn how to do this?
And it just turns into the snowball.
And I think they just organically start using it more
and more and more. Right.
We've seen that and we were one of the first to offer emergency
ultrasound courses starting backin 1994 and that that market and
(23:58):
that now we're seeing the utilization growing
exponentially in family medicine.
And they're kind of where emergency medicine was, you
know, 20 years ago, but they're rapidly adopting the use of
ultrasound and residency programs are incorporating it.
And so the, the, the awareness is there and they want to use
(24:21):
it. But again, there's that level of
hesitancy because they don't know how to use it.
They, they aren't even really familiar with what's available
to them. You know, they just know I need
AI, need a handheld system, you know, So we, Casey and I were
just at the AFP meeting in October and there was great
interest there. And, but it was the same thing
(24:43):
over. I need the education.
I don't even know where to start.
I know I need a handheld. You know, all those questions
come out and so. I didn't know.
I don't think that I can get reimbursed for this.
Right, that was. A big AFP for that to hear that
was pretty interesting but and yeah, especially in it's
(25:03):
interesting seeing the trickle down effect now too, because you
know, like Laurie said in the emergency medicine setting and
critical care, they've been utilizing now for a couple
decades and everybody's kind of getting familiar with it.
And when we go to exhibit ASAP, it's people coming up saying I
can't thank you enough for this education.
Like it's literally like shaped and changed my careers.
Well now they're they know and they're so comfortable with
(25:25):
ultrasound they're expecting it before people are even
transported to the hospital. And so it's kind of trickling
down to EMS and pre hospital andhow are the technologies
communicating from infield to beable to get those images ahead
of time or have your infield operators like transmit that
data. So it's, you know, it's, it's
interesting seeing that progression of things.
(25:47):
And then same thing with family practice.
Like, you know, there's lot of practitioners that are dual
boarded and they're working in emergency medicine and family
practice. And now they're expecting their
other providers, you know, nursepractitioners, P as and stuff,
to be able to be at the same level as them, to provide the
same sort of diagnostic and treatment capabilities.
Yeah. Just to take it back to the
(26:08):
question, we just recently had apoint of care scan workshop and
we had a participant in who had never held a transducer in her
career. She was family medicine, you
know, dual certified, where she also does emergency medicine.
She's in a very rural location. And when she came in the door,
she was very hesitant, very shy.She didn't want to be the first
(26:30):
one to scan, you know, just, I've never done this before.
She kept apologizing for taking,you know, a long time to get an
image or to, you know, figure out the orientation of her probe
and having to correct her a lot,correct her hand placement and
things. And then by the end of day one,
I started to see the change, youknow, and that's what's the
benefit of a hands on class. You come in and you have expert
(26:53):
instructors who are guiding you and helping you with your hand
placement. And how do I win?
Gas is in the way. How do I get around that?
You know, we can have all the AIwe want, but at the end of the
day, you have to know technique and there's a technique to it.
And but I could see it building in her.
And then by the time day 2 started, she was like, oh, I
(27:14):
want to scan 1st. And I said, well, look at you.
Things have changed. And by the time she left at the
end of day, 212 hours of hands on scanning, she said, I cannot
believe how much I've learned intwo days.
I cannot believe how confident Ifeel to go back and integrate
this. But she did say, I'm thankful we
have the system we have because it does have certain technique.
(27:34):
She didn't say AI, but it was AI, certain technical aspects to
it. That will provide me some
feedback, guide me, we'll do these auto calculations for me
and I look forward to scanning on it because I know that I'll
have that to kind of supplement and reinforce what I've learned
here. So it was really cool to see
that progression in her over thecourse of the 12 hours she was
with us. It's amazing how important
(27:56):
confidence is in the equation. You know, and I, you know, I'm
not, I don't practice medicine, obviously, but I have, I've
experienced this, the confidencebarrier in my own profession.
So, you know, we'll go to conventions, we're going to
trade shows, we'll talk to physicians all day long who, you
(28:18):
know, who've been scanning for along time.
And I've always been nervous to scan myself in front of a
physician because that, you know, they see this, that what
if I, you know, can't find the window?
What if I can't, you know, don'trepresent the, the technology
well or this or that. So I always, you know, opt not
to until I started working here.So it's 15 years, you'd think
(28:40):
I'd get really good at something, right?
But I was still nervous. So I, I started using our trio
feature. And you know, an apical or a
parasternal long axis is pretty easy to get to just to unbutton
your shirt. And so I'm like, well, I'm going
to try to see how well it works.And honest to goodness, 5
(29:02):
minutes later I'm getting diagnostic quality according to
the, the rating. And you know, that took care of
this confidence thing for me because I knew I had something
there to tell me what to do. And if I got into trouble, if I
got way off, I could at least get back to Ground Zero and, and
start optimizing again. And so at that point, you know,
(29:24):
I don't, I don't hesitate at all.
I'm almost like, hey, you want to see it?
And they're like, yeah, that's fine.
It is very accurate too, I can say that.
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
What a great way to demonstrate.Yeah, yeah.
And it's just, it's one of thoselike, you know, and now I don't
need, I don't need the, the AI cuz I mean, I have the
(29:46):
advantage. I'm scanning myself so I can
feel exactly which rib and exactly which angle I have that
muscle memory. So I don't, I don't need it
anymore, So I can can turn that off.
And, and I imagine, you know, obviously I'm not, you know,
interpreting or, you know, anything like that.
Every patient's a little different, but it's just a
(30:07):
little peek into that experienceof I don't want to scan because
I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to look like a fool
to I know what I'm doing, you know, and just that that
transition was just me and the ultrasound system and, and, and
10 minutes of, of work and, and now I, I can't go back, right.
(30:28):
It's, yeah, it's not like I'm going to forget with muscle
memory. It's pretty long lasting.
So it's, yeah, it's, it's interesting to see that that
confidence piece can really prevent someone from taking that
step. You know, whether they're there
with a patient or at a workshop,whatever it gets to give them a
little bit of confidence to justtry it.
(30:50):
It builds from there. Yeah, for sure, like you were
saying. Well, you mentioned you know in
when you were just speaking the trio.
So why don't we transition and why don't you talk us a little
bit, tell us a little bit about the AI capabilities that are on
the Cosmos? Yeah, sure.
There's a there's a few different flavors that that we
have. And again, you know, we, we,
(31:13):
it's AAI and as if it's like this, this magical thing, it's,
you know, there's no magic involved.
It's, you know, I like how your,your student described it.
You know, it's a like technical assistance or, you know,
whatever. But yeah, there's a few
different flavors that that we employ. 1 is really directed at
helping new ultrasound users or novice, novice scanners to
(31:38):
become more proficient. And so it's, it's really
dedicated toward helping them to, to know how to do the a
particular gap exam or how to capture a particular image.
And so, so one of them is, is trio and with trio, because it's
doing three things kind of simultaneously.
So it's, it's, there's a little animation in the window and I
(32:01):
get guy is a shows a depiction of, of a, of a body and a
transducer on there. And it, it shows you how to, how
to move it, where to place it, you know, relative to, to the,
the body that you see in the, inthe animation.
So you know, tilt fan slide to kind of get you to the right
(32:22):
window. And then at the same time, it
has these 5 bars. The more bars, the better.
So if you're at one or two bars,the, the bars are colored red to
say, you know, you're not there yet.
And then once you get to 3 bars,they turn green and four bars
and, and five bars are, you know, perfect.
(32:44):
If you can get to 5 bars here, you're doing great.
So it's just kind of like there's a, you know, there's a,
it's fun to watch people use it because they're like, come on,
come on, 4 bars. And, you know, they're trying to
what, what those fine little movements they're seeing how
every little thing impacts the image quality.
And then the, the third thing it's doing is labeling the
(33:05):
anatomy in real time as well. So in this case, you're looking
at the, at the heart. We have 3 views for trio
personal lawn, apical 4 and apical 2.
And so it'll label all the anatomy of the heart in real
time. And I'll show you what the
valves are and, and the chambers.
(33:25):
And then we have, I guess still thinking of the on the, the, the
education side, we have a, what we call the fast AI.
And that one is for, for any part of the fast exam that you
would normally do, we have labeling of, of the anatomy
(33:48):
there. So the abdomen and then it'll,
you know, it'll label the view that you're in right upper
quadrant, left upper quadrant, etcetera.
IBC it'll you know, you know, label all that anatomy.
It won't label whether or not there's fluid in the abdomen,
but it'll, it'll label the spacewhere you know, fluid may
(34:09):
accumulate. So there's that's a fast AI.
Then we have a few others. So the auto EF is, is driven by
AI as well. So it, it incorporates trio and
then it's, it's taking you through The Simpsons, the
biplane Simpsons method, which is, you know, the gold standard
(34:29):
for, for EF. So it guides you to get the
apical 4 chamber, then the apical 2 chamber.
It'll auto capture those. Once you, you, you get the
quality that, you know, the diagnostic quality that, that we
need. And then it'll run that, that
report and it'll, it'll give youan ejection fraction and then
(34:51):
it'll show you the, the, the, you know, in that report window,
it'll show you the images that were captured.
You can tap into that and then adjust the tracing if you like,
and then recalculate based on those adjustments.
So there could the control is really all in your hands as a
user. And that one's really aimed at,
you know, there's an educationalelement for sure, but that one's
(35:11):
is definitely aimed at improvingthe efficiency of that exam.
You know, again, thinking of, ofpeople that don't have a lot of
time and you want to answer a question about, about the heart,
That's a very, very quick way to, to do that and to have that
confidence again, to kind of guide you to, to make sure
you're getting the quality that you need and, and the right
(35:33):
view. And then we have some, you know,
various other ways that we employ AI for, you know, if
you're doing a PW or CW trace tracing the waveform, we use AI
to to assist with that for VTi. And there's a lot more coming.
So yeah. That's exciting.
Well, the efficiency aspect of it definitely speaks to even the
(35:56):
more experienced sonographer or synologist that's performing the
exams because we do hear from some of our sonographers about
their fear of AI taking their job away from them, you know,
And so, you know, you have to try to educate the stenographers
as well as to how that's going to benefit them, help their
workflow, help them be more efficient.
(36:16):
You know, as far as quantitationgoes, especially in cardiac
ultrasound, you know, those, those little things can make a
difference in how long it takes you to get that exam done.
So, you know, I think that's something that really needs to
be expressed as well to not justthe novice benefits from it, but
the more experienced as well. Yeah, it'll definitely improve
(36:39):
workflow and efficiency even amongst the stenographers.
And, and I feel like it'll also help with those interpretations
from the radiology side of things.
You know, the radiologist or thecardiologist who's looking at
that study has additional information, you know, provided
thanks to the AI, those calculations and things that
were done. It's just more information.
(37:00):
I think anytime you're dealing with imaging and making medical
decisions based on imaging, moreis better.
You know, having something that's auto grading your image
and telling you, yes, this is a truly diagnostic image.
That can never be a bad thing. You know, you might not like the
feedback, right? That's fair.
But it's honest and it's gonna tell you that this is a great
(37:22):
image to perform this calculation.
And if you don't have it, you don't have it.
And sometimes there's not anything you can do.
But then you have the AI to support you when you go to your
cardiologist or radiologist to say, I'm sorry, I can't because
it's just not a diagnostic exam.Even the AI said so.
Right. So you the AI dolphin.
There's always a learning curve and everything that you do, and
(37:45):
there's no perfect answer, but you know, if you have some extra
tools in your toolkit to help you out, that can definitely
help you to expedite your learning curve as well as help
in your confidence building and also in the accuracy of your
exam. So I think it's a great thing.
(38:06):
But as we said, AI isn't everything.
It doesn't solve every single problem.
So why don't you talk to us a little bit about that as well?
Yeah, You know, I it's a it's like a hammer is great for
putting in a nail, but it's not great for pulling out a screw
or, you know, putting a window in a house or something like
(38:27):
that. So it is it's it's it's good for
some things, It's not good for everything.
And so I think that's where as acompany, we like to think of the
picture in a more holistic way. You know, and I think as, as
we're thinking about, you know, that's one of the reasons why
we've, we've also put more capabilities into, into this
(38:52):
system than what you might expect in a, in a handheld.
That's why we spent extra time optimizing the image to ensure
that it's the highest possible quality that physics would allow
us to, to create, right. So we use, you know, the gold
standard technology that's proven, you know, the, the
(39:13):
piezoelectric crystals are the best in terms of image quality.
And our heritage goes way back also.
I mean, we're not a this companydidn't just come out of nowhere.
Our heritage goes back. We have engineers from
developing the technology that Phillips uses from, from ATL.
We have engineers from so on thesite we have engineers from
(39:36):
Siemens. It's ASIC based technology,
which again is gold standard forultrasound.
So all of those things have to work as well.
And it's drop tested, it's shocked, it's baked, it's
frozen, it's, you know, highly, highly durable.
So that's why we you know, warranty the product for five
(39:57):
years. But you know, the, the
capabilities it it's important to, you know, I think the
industry. Over the years is sort of
developed technology that fits into boxes.
You know, we're we're humans, welike to categorize things.
And so the handheld products have a have a particular set of
(40:20):
capabilities. Your kind of mid range products
have a certain set of capabilities and your high end
products have another have another set.
And some of that just has happened, you know, as you know,
manufacturers want to have a, a lower cost option and a mid cost
option, a hike. And so the way you, you
(40:41):
differentiate products is by their capabilities.
So there are some, you know, your, your bigger companies that
have products in each of those 3categories.
They're going to keep the handheld low cost products
stripped down in terms of their capabilities and they're going
to unleash all of the capabilities possible and then
(41:02):
and the high end systems and there will be a premium for
that. We don't have a product in every
category. And so our thought is, you know,
why, why would we D feature thisproduct?
Why would we we hold it back when it could be so much more.
(41:22):
And so, you know, that's why we're the only handheld device
that has ACW Doppler, which is essential if you're going to do
a full echo, which you can do, you know, with our system.
And then, you know, so that the capabilities on the products
really important. It just helps you to answer more
questions. And so being something that that
(41:43):
has, you know, capabilities of the of the highest end systems,
but is as also has the, you know, some tools to make it very
accessible for new learners. It's something that you can get
while you're starting out, whileyou're learning, that's at a
price point that you can afford in those early days before
(42:06):
you're really able to justify the reimbursement and things
like that. But it's something you can grow
into. You don't have to graduate to
some other $100,000 system. What you bought, you know, now
is something you'll be able to use as, as, as a, you know, an
expert in the future. And then, you know, the other
thing that we've done to, to solve some of these problems
(42:28):
with it with a handheld, you know, a lot of institutions,
they don't they're, they sort ofput up with the the handheld
paradigm where I get the the probe from the company and then
I got to go find out what tabletto use.
And then I got to go find out a stand that will sort of hold
this stuff together so the tablet doesn't walk off.
(42:50):
And so the probe has a home. So one of the things we've done
as well to solve that as we've put all those things together,
we call it Cosmos Plus and you get our transducers.
We include a 13 inch iPad Pro and our our own custom medical
grade stand. You can plug in both transducers
(43:14):
at the same time. You can plug the whole system
into the wall and charge while you're scanning.
So it's, you know, it's, it has all of the same, you know, all
of the things you would expect out of, you know, a premium car
based system, but you don't haveto pay a premium for it.
So some of these things are, arealso, you know, they're again,
(43:34):
they're barriers to adoption that as a, as a company, as a,
as a problem solving, you know, entity, we can combine that
things and, and combine those things and make it so that much
easier. You know, they order, they do
one order it all comes in the box.
Put it all together once and youknow, we, we, we take off those
(43:56):
those extra steps for the end user.
Yeah, the car is really nice. You know, we've worked with a
number of different machines andI have to say that the Cosmos
car is a game changer because that holds your tablet for you.
If a place to rest your transducers, you know, and it's
just and you can plug both of them in, like you said, and just
(44:17):
toggle between, you know, the torso and the linear, the Lexa.
You just hit the button and and it goes right back and forth
between the two. So it's definitely a game
changer because there are times we're working with some other
handheld systems and it's like, OK, I need a tablet.
And when I now I need, like you said, the stand for the tablet.
Well, I need the charger for thetablet and I need, you know, and
(44:37):
then before, you know, you've got all these things.
Poor Casey. He's always the one of us to put
all this together for us. We're like Casey, I needed to
cast to a TVI needed to do this.He's just like, Oh my gosh.
Well. And practically too, I mean, if
you're in a clinical practice, if you're going to pull that
into of an ICU with, you know, patients that are, you know, in
critical condition, all of thoseextra cables start, are there a
(45:02):
lot of times they're neglected in terms of cleaning, you know,
and disinfection. So the more things you have to
sort of keep track of, the more things you also have to
disinfect. That's true.
And so if you you know streamlining, there's the simple
act of just streamlining it to where.
Yeah, we have. Can I pull this over our viewer?
Our listeners have the cart behind me, Let's just pull it
(45:24):
right in to our view. While she's pulling it over.
So I know that like your original ones were Android
based, we now have the iOS basedone.
Do users still have the ability to get an Android based if their
facility would require that? All right, good.
Yeah, Yeah, we're Android and iOS compatible for off the shelf
devices. And then, you know, those are
expensive devices. So one of the things you'll see
(45:47):
there is that that the stand head it, it locks the tablet
into place and then there's a key in the back.
If you're in if I can show. A volatile institution where
things like to walk away, you can lock that thing in place as
well. Yeah.
I think that's really important.It's nice that you kind of
outline those different featuresof your system because
(46:09):
especially for our, our novice listeners who are just getting
into utilizing ultrasound or thinking about using ultrasound,
you know, they're, they're kind of just going around asking some
general questions and, and many people just feel like, you know,
I just need a handheld. That's all I need, but they
don't really understand all how it all fits together.
(46:31):
And they need to really think about what kind of environment
am I going to be working in? What type of patient exams am I
going to be performing? And, and there are a variety of
handheld systems that are out there.
There's not just one which a lotof times people think there's
you know, only one XYZ system orwhatever, you know, and they
don't realize they don't know enough about it to make an
(46:53):
informed decision on that initial purpose purchase.
And that initial purchase may make, make a difference as to
whether they continue to use ultrasound and benefit their
patients if they didn't make theright choice.
So you know there is there is a a that's a good points that you
made. Yeah, there's a lot that goes
(47:14):
into it that, you know, especially as New Year's that,
you know, they don't think about.
Like you said, like this just came up the other day, our probe
doesn't have a battery in the, in the, in the, in the probe.
And so it gets all the power it needs from the, from the tablet
that that is plugged into. You might not think much about
that until you pick up the system.
(47:34):
You've got a charge tablet, you plug in the probe and, and the
probe isn't charged. So just having one less battery
to think about is, is another one of those, one of those
things, you know, the, you know,the wireless is a great
solution, but that means you've,you've got to have two, two
devices that you that have to remain charged.
(47:57):
And so, you know, they're just some of those those basic things
you might get in at a really lowcost startup cost, but then
what's the service like? You know, so that's where
something you can rely on for for five years versus something
that might not, you know, be as serviceable 2 years down the
road when something goes wrong. You know, those are all things
(48:19):
to think about A. Funny story, we had somebody
here at the point of care class and they brought their handheld
device and he made it a point tosay, I literally told my
administration I wanted a transducer I could put in my
pocket. And then he holds it up and the
transducer is small, but it's attached to this giant Apple
iPad Pro. And he's like, I can't put this
(48:42):
in my pocket. And I was like, yeah, but you
can put it on your phone. You can do it all sort.
And he's like, I can, you can use different platforms.
You don't have to use this gianttablet.
But I just thought it was funny that the people were making the,
a lot of the times don't have all this information, which is
why we do this podcast. Our podcast is for all
(49:02):
listeners, not just clinicians. So hopefully there's some
administrators out there who arelooking for some solutions who
are listening to this. And, you know, they don't know
the insurance and outs of these things.
They don't understand what they just did for that, you know, or
didn't do for that clinician by buying that expensive, very
expensive iPad Pro that was really nice but definitely won't
(49:25):
fit in his pocket most. Of the time purchasing
departments aren't don't have the medical background or even
the understanding as to what is really needed and they don't
even know the questions to ask. But it's, you know, that's
again, comes back to kind of getwhat, yeah, you know, unless you
really know what to ask for and how it's going to best, you
(49:47):
know, meet your needs. Well, that's why we do what we
do. By having companies like your
support our programs, you get toput this into practice and they
get to come here and learn. And not only are they learning
about integrating ultrasound, but they're learning about the
systems that they're working on and how will this meet my needs?
And they get to see it and hold it and scan with it and really
(50:09):
start to understand it in a different way and go home
feeling more informed to make a decision that will hopefully
lead to them integrating it fulltime.
And why we do these podcasts so that we can reach more people
and help to inform our listenersso that they can make
appropriate decisions that can impact them for a lot of years.
(50:31):
I mean, we only have so much money, right?
Can't keep going back and askingfor more money right away,
right? Right.
So yeah. Well, did you have something to
add, Casey? No, I was no say that, you know,
just like you were talking aboutthe capabilities of being able
to scan and charge at the same time.
(50:51):
So, you know, facilities that have high volume handhelds are
great and stuff, but you know, you have to look at what you're
realistically going to be scanning on a day-to-day basis.
So yeah, having this cart and stuff is definitely helps us in
an education setting for sure. Yeah, Yeah.
We, you know, we do hear about that a lot.
I think there there is, you know, like, like you said, you
(51:12):
know, you're one of your students came in and said I need
a handheld. But it's interesting because
there are no shortage of optionsthese days.
Right it. Wasn't always the case, but
there are there's ultrasound systems in every category and
they all emit sound waves and they all produce a 2D image and
you know so are they all equal? Well, it depends on your needs,
(51:34):
right? And so that's where a lot of
people are. You know, the tough part about
creating a new category is you have here, you know, we're
fighting against perception of well, it's handheld, therefore
it's. It's like every.
Other handheld or it you know, like, you know, just for
instance, the the the capabilities you you put that on
(51:57):
a stand got both transduced, yougot the two transducer ability
to connect them both at the sametime.
You got this massive, you know, 13 inch imaging screen on one of
the you know most state-of-the-art displays on the
market and you're getting that at 1/4 of the price of a of a
(52:21):
compact comparable pocus cart system.
And that's another thing that a lot of people don't know,
administrators aren't, aren't aware of yet is just how, yeah,
I could buy a, you know, fight. You know, we just had this
happen recently where an institution was going to be
buying several cart based systems and they found out about
(52:41):
our product and they thought I could save 3/4 of the price, get
all the same functionality, all the same transducers.
And I get AI on a stand for 1/4 of the price of what I was going
to pay for these other systems. And so I think that's where,
again, we're not, you know, behold into a particular class
(53:03):
just for the the sake of it. We're in the business of solving
problems. And if we can do that at A, at a
lower price point for, for someone who's looking at a high
end cart system, or if we can, you know, give someone who needs
the portability of a, of a, of ahandheld, you know, the, you
know, the ability to, to use it in that, in that use case, or
(53:29):
to, you know, marry it to a stand in and use it as you would
some other cart system. So it really can kind of play
that whole spectrum, which we think is a big advantage.
You know, that that people don'thave to say, well, I can, I can
only do these exams with this product.
Then if I want to do anything else and I've got to go find a
different product. And sometimes that's happening
(53:49):
with the same patient. And so if they can go from A-Z
without, you know, on one system, yeah, you know, we're,
we're hearing that that's a, youknow, that's a big advantage
that, that, that customers are, are appreciating.
And when you're, when somebody'slooking at systems and stuff,
one of the questions that does come up to is, is this a, you
know, do they purchase the equipment and then they have to
(54:10):
have a license to maintain it, to keep working it or is is it a
subscription or is it a single payment purchase?
How's that? Looking good questions.
Yeah, I mean, whatever option works best for you, we have, we
have that option. Most people go outright, they
buy the probe outright and the software outright and they don't
(54:30):
they don't have anything else toto worry about.
If if that price points a littletoo high, we do have options for
subscription or you know, if youwant to D feature the the
product and just do kind of 2D color PW, we have that option so
that the software capabilities are a la carte.
If you wish, AI capabilities are, are a la carte.
(54:54):
So yeah, there's but it there's no, there's no nest.
There's no need for any ongoing software.
There's no account required to use it.
It's, you know, once you have the product, you've, you've got
it for the life of the product. Excellent.
Great to know that's. Great.
Well, building on that, can you talk it, talk to us and our
(55:14):
listeners about the integration into the customer workflow?
So I purchased this product. What comes next?
Yeah, as far as like how are, how are people using it or what?
Yeah. Like how are they get, you know,
how do they basically go from the sale to the application?
What do you guys do to support the customer in that transition?
(55:37):
Just kind of like summarize. Yeah, with any purchase there's
a, there's an in service. So we'll, you know, we'll, we're
happy to meet virtually for, forany questions, but we typically
will be there on site to help put everything together and, you
know, make sure that we answer any questions or, you know, you
(55:58):
know, we can point out where thesettings are if you want to
integrate with your pack system.Perfect.
You know, how to set up the, theDICOM destinations and things
like that are, are often a question.
How does that work? Say, I mean, we're, we're very
hands on in that way. We're we're AUS based company.
(56:19):
So there's we are global though.So we're we we're in 74
different countries. Many of the countries outside of
the US are distributor based or partner based.
And so there are some differences in terms of exactly
how hands on we as a team are, but usually those those partners
(56:39):
are very hands on is in the sameway.
You know, we have a pretty high standard there.
So yeah. And you know, once you you get
the system, it's just as simple as downloading the app from the
App Store, plugging in the transducer and started scanning.
I think that initial, that initial scan, you'll need to
register the pro. So you'll need to be connected
(57:01):
to the Internet and then that'lljust check the licensing server
and just make sure that you knowall of your licenses are
activated. Yeah, and obviously we're huge
proponents of hands on skills training, you know, come to a
course, work with the experts, get that confidence.
But you guys have a lot of tutorials built in too, don't
you? We have, yes, we have some
(57:21):
tutorials on the system, there'sa little video library on kind
of getting started. But we, we really do lean on our
education partners like yourself.
I think we, we are very quick tosay we're, you know, we're not
going to try to be the experts and, you know, training how to
do the, the ultrasound exams. And you know, we, we point to
(57:44):
your organization, which comes very highly recommended and we
get a lot of great feedback for anyone that attends your
courses. But yeah, we point on our
website, we're quick to say, youknow, if you need ongoing
training, you know, on site, online, how you guys have a ton
of resources. So we always, we always highly
(58:05):
recommend your Gulf Coast. Thank you.
Very much for. That I know that that comes up a
lot like people don't typically understand like well why doesn't
if I'm paying this much why doesn't the education company
like have you know a credit education.
Well that's beyond your control.It's beyond our control.
That's the government's control and the AM as control, so they
(58:25):
you. Know keep it separate for a
reason. Equipment companies can't handle
accredited education. We can't handle equipment sales.
We maintain, you know, agnostic point of view and stuff and
we're there to to help learners how to use, how to actually
perform the ultrasound. You're there to provide the
newest, latest, greatest technology and that's why these
partnerships work really well. I don't think anybody could do
(58:46):
it all perfectly. It's just a better outcome for
the clinician and the learner tohave it be this way because this
is what we do. We educate, we train, that's
what we focus on, and you guys do what you do, which is make
incredible technology that makesit easier to use and more
efficient. So yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(59:07):
Yeah, we couldn't do without youguys.
I mean, it's there's, there's, you know, we could raise money
and, you know, create an education department and, you
know, create this powerful stuff.
But why? You know, I mean, you're, you,
you guys are great at what you do.
You're dedicated to it. Like you pointed out, it's it's
just, it's such a huge value that you know someone who needs
(59:31):
to learn how to use ultrasound, learns from people who all they
do is teach people how to use ultrasound.
I mean, we've seen it time and time again and other companies
and stuff for the past four decades.
You know, they exactly build an education department, pump
millions of dollars and time and, you know, new employees and
stuff into it. And then they realize it's OK.
(59:51):
It's not our wheelhouse. Like, let's pull back and then,
you know, come back to us. So we're.
Yeah. Yeah, right.
The resources can be better. Used we're we're pretty we're
pretty big on I mean, even we'renot, we're not, we're not a big
ego company. I guess, you know, we we very
quick to to partner with people that are better at doing
(01:00:12):
something than we are. So I think that that's like 19
Labs is a good example of that as a partner where they have a
whole telemedicine platform. Well, let's just integrate with
that rather than trying to buildour own and incorporate it and
build out a whole team and technology and spend millions of
dollars. But shoot, you know, we've got
(01:00:34):
an API, we have a whole softwaredevelopment kit, we can partner
and then boom. I mean, they were extremely
quick on that. And so, you know, same with,
with education, it just doesn't make sense for us to try to
reinvent the wheel when folks like you are constantly
innovating constantly, you know,refining your craft and, and
meeting users where they're at. I mean, that's, there's no way
(01:00:58):
we could catch up at this point in there.
There'd be, it'd be a wasted effort.
I think. And you know, in, in my opinion,
and I think I don't mean to shame any companies who are
doing, putting out, you know, educational content and whatnot.
I think that's totally fine. And for us, I'd rather, I'd
rather underpin your efforts andsend customers your way.
(01:01:19):
It's going to be a better use oftheir money.
And you know, and, and it allowsus to really stay focused on
what we're good at. We're staffed to redefine
ultrasound, you know, redefine point of care ultrasound.
We're not staffed to redefine education at this stage, so.
I like what you said too about your guys ego, because it's very
true. Like when you go, when we see
(01:01:40):
you guys at trade shows, you're everybody that I've interacted
with it at a company has been like super friendly, outgoing.
It's, you know, very welcoming type company willing to like
share whatever information you have and stuff and and you're
very customer centric. You don't have that like kind of
stuck up vibe that you can see from time to time and in other
sectors of healthcare and it's it's really nice like dealing
(01:02:02):
with a company like yours. Oh yeah, it's been a pleasure
from the beginning it. Has we really appreciate all of
the support you've provided for our company.
It's definitely, you know, without your support, we would
not be able to provide the levelof education that we do and the
hands on skills training, which is, you know, vital to the
learner's ability to go back andyou know, immediately integrate
(01:02:23):
the skills learn into clinical practice.
So we certainly appreciate your support and I think you did an
amazing job of summarizing all the benefits of your system and
features and how you really kindof in a class of your own known
as far as you know, identifying as a handheld and giving you the
(01:02:44):
to giving the features of higherend systems as well.
So I think that's important for our our learners to know and,
and to realize that when they'reout looking for a system, even
if they're thinking of it, Oh, Ijust need a handheld.
It's more than just needing a handheld.
You, you know, system, you need a system that's going to provide
the what what you need the technology you need to best
(01:03:07):
provide the care for your patients.
And that's going to be differentfor every clinician.
So they need to do their due diligence to figure out what
what system is that best for them.
And so. That's really well said.
Yeah. So I think this has been a great
discussion with with you Luke, and it's really been fun and
(01:03:31):
informing to hear more about thesystem for our learners to hear
more about not only just their capabilities in the POCUS world,
but also how you've integrated AI to improve efficiency, to
help in the training of novice users, helping the efficiency of
the more seasoned stenographers and and basically to help
(01:03:51):
improve overall patient care. So I think that, you know your
the goal of these advancements is really to help physicians and
healthcare providers to rapidly,rapidly diagnose and treat their
patients and that does result with improved patient outcomes.
So we really appreciate you joining us here today and
sharing all of this exciting information with us.
(01:04:14):
Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me.
I really appreciated the conversation.
Really fun to talk with you all.Yeah, it's been a lot of fun and
we look forward to doing it again.
And we'd also like to thank all of our listeners.
You guys have always just been so great to us and so loyal.
So thank you for being with us today.
Make sure that you subscribe to the Sonography Lounge podcast,
visit us on social media so thatyou don't miss a single episode,
(01:04:36):
and we hope that you have a great day and happy scanning.
Thanks for listening to The Sonography Lounge.
Don't forget, if you like this episode, please subscribe and
leave us a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts. You can also find us on
Instagram at Sonography Lounge and Twitter at Sonography LNG.
(01:05:02):
If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions,
feel free to send an e-mail to us at
sonographylounge@gmail.com. Have a great week and scan,
scan, scan.
Recording from the Sunshine CitySt.
Petersburg, FL overlooking beautiful Tampa Bay, this is the
Sonography Lounge. Sponsored by Gulf Coast
Ultrasound Institute. This podcast is dedicated to
medical professionals and patients around the world
interested in diagnostic and interventional ultrasound.
(00:25):
Our podcast will discuss everything ultrasound from news,
trends, career paths, new technology, and industry
updates. Hosted by Lori Green and Tricia
Rio of Gulf Coast Ultrasound Institute, they bring over 4
decades of experience in the ultrasound profession and are
here to guide you through this journey.
Now sit back, relax and enjoy. Hey everyone, and thank you for
(00:50):
joining us today on the Stenography Lounge where we talk
all things ultrasound. I'm Tricia Rio and I'm joined
with my Co host Lori Green. Hey everybody, happy to have you
here. All right, so we all know
ultrasound is a versatile tool with increasing access and
growing utilization, especially as a first line imaging
technique for many practice specialties.
But as fast as ultrasound has expanded globally, AI related
(01:13):
technology has too expanded at an unprecedented rate in the
healthcare industry because it excels at identifying complex
patterns, can provide quantitative assessment
automatically, and it results ina more accurate and reproducible
result. So in today's episode, we're
going to focus on integrating AIin ultrasound, and we're happy
(01:34):
to have with us today Luke Baldwin from Echo News Join us.
Welcome, Luke. Welcome.
Yeah, thanks for having me. So Luke, you've spent 15 years
in point of care ultrasound managing the entire spectrum of
marketing from content creation to brand management to product
management, both at Soundosite and Phillips.
And now you lead marketing and product management at Econus as
(01:55):
the Vice President of Global Marketing.
So why don't you just start witha brief overview of Econus and
tell us a little bit about the company?
Yeah, sure. You know, I think in, you know,
I like it. Like you pointed out, I've been
ultrasound for a while and I think what I love about the
space is, you know, as as a marketer, as a, you know,
(02:18):
product theater, the goal is to solve problems or to introduce
people to a solution to a problem that they have.
And as a problem solver at heart, for me, the ultrasound
space is just an amazing, an amazing opportunity where you're
solving problems that are actually helping people's lives.
(02:40):
And so what's, what's interesting about Econos and you
know, I joined after they, they were well on the way, had a
product and all this stuff. But what was really interesting
about joining Econos is the problem that they're solving,
You know, we're solving it in a brand new way.
We have the, the technology thatthat we've developed is really
(03:03):
defining a whole new category ofpoint of care ultrasound.
So historically your your legacypoint of care ultrasound
systems, your cart based systemsare going to have all the
features you need, but they're going to come at a price and
(03:24):
they're not going to be as portable as let's say handheld.
And your traditional handheld systems these days you're going
to have, you know, low cost, highly portable, but you often
compromise on image quality or capabilities.
And So what we've done is compressed all of those into one
device where you have something in a handheld form factor.
(03:46):
So ultimate portability at a handheld price point, but it has
the capability set of your highest end point of care
ultrasound systems incorporatingCW Doppler PW and then layering
on top of that an incredible problem solving technology
called AI to, to make that very,very accessible to the newest
(04:09):
users. And so, you know, that's the,
it's an incredibly exciting company to be a part of.
I would agree with that, Yeah, it's a good time to be an
ultrasound. Absolutely.
It is, yeah. And, and yeah, the portability
and versatility and the capabilities of the system is,
(04:30):
is really important and everybody has a different need
and the in the environment that they work in.
So it's nice when you can have asystem that be is able to offer
you the flexibility that you might need in different
scenarios. So yeah.
Right. And.
So to be able to put it in your pocket.
Yeah, exactly. Nice.
(04:51):
So you're, you're right, this the point of care ultrasound
market is very exciting and it'sreally expanded the the
capability of being able to effectively treat patients in a
more expedient manner and that really helps to result in more
positive patient outcomes. So it's exciting to be able to
(05:12):
work with you and others just to, you know, bring that
technology to our medical professionals so that they were
able to provide higher level of patient care.
So, yeah, so in terms of your system having AI, we wanted to
kind of feature that and today'spodcast, So why don't we start
out with you? I'm just telling everybody about
(05:34):
what is the point of AI and ultrasound?
What's the benefit of that? Yeah, I love this question.
And I think, you know, it's something in this era we need to
be introspective about. I mean, AI is exploding.
And so you have to ask yourself,you know, is, you know, what is
the point? Is it just to sort of get on the
(05:56):
bandwagon and just say, hey, we have AI too.
Is it just a sneaky way to made it make extra money?
You know, what is what is AI? What what is the what is the
point of it? And it really, for us, it goes
back to problem solving. AI is a tool just like our
computers or the Internet or, you know, the wheels on your
(06:20):
car, they're a means to, to a bigger and more important end so
that it's not an end in itself. So for us, you know, as we
really reflect, reflect on what our, our vision is as a company,
I've been struck, you know, and all, and, and every company I've
been in, we, we have these, these conversations where we'll
(06:42):
sit around as an internal team and we're, we'll think about the
product. We'll think about our users, you
think about the various physicians and clinicians around
the world. We think about ultrasound and
what's the point of ultrasound. And often we, these
conversations go back to a time where one of us will recount an
(07:04):
experience we had at a hospital where a loved one was seen by a
doctor and they didn't have ultrasound or they didn't use
ultrasound. I remember one time we were in
the hospital, my son had extremeabdominal pain and I've been in
ultrasound for years. I'm like, all right, guys, you
know, where's the ultrasound? Why aren't you using what you
(07:25):
know, go look inside, you know, and I pointed out they had AI,
think it was a turbo or something down the hall.
And I said, Hey, can you take a look?
And they're like, oh, the, the person who uses that isn't here
on shift. It was this moment of like this
gap of you, you, you'd know about this great tool that can
give you so much information dynamically in real time safely
(07:48):
with no radiation. And you know, you know that it's
there and it's, and it's not being used.
And so we sort of distilled thatidea into like this, this vision
for us is, you know, can we helpto create a world where no, no
one has to say, I wish my doctorwould have used ultrasound.
(08:10):
And it just kind of creates that, that, that I guess a
connection to, to our our physicians, but also to their
customers, the patients. And so how you know, how do you
do that? Right.
So the question is about AI. What, what's, what's the point?
The point for us is how can we lower that barrier to ultrasound
(08:33):
adoption? And there's a number of reasons
why people don't use it, but thenumber one reason is education.
That's in every study I've seen,every survey I've seen the, the
thing that prevents someone fromusing ultrasound or, or delays
them from kind of crossing that threshold is I don't know how to
(08:54):
use it or I don't know how to use it well.
And so you, you break that down.You say, OK, education is a big
barrier to ultrasound adoption. That's why my son wasn't seen,
you know, they didn't use it on,on my son in the hospital.
So what is that made-up of? And, you know, we think about it
in three different ways. The first part is how do you use
(09:15):
the ultrasound system? What are the buttons mean?
What is the transducer? You know, all that?
And then it's how do you get theright image?
How do you look at the, the image that you know, what
window, you know, how do you, how do you know what, what
you're seeing on the screen? And, and then the last part is
(09:36):
interpretation. How do you, is that a normal
heart? Is that an abnormal heart?
Is that the bowels I'm seeing? Is that something else?
And so we look at, you know, there's a lot of ways in the
industry you can, you can help overcome that barrier.
You could just, you know, muscleup and and provide a whole bunch
of education and some companies have done that.
(09:59):
You can make your system really easy to use.
That should be table stakes at this point.
You know, ultrasound system should be easy to use, but what
else can you do? And that's where AI comes in for
us. It's, that's one of the big, one
of the big reasons we use AI as a, as a problem solving
technology is to help novice users become more proficient and
(10:23):
so on. You know, with, with the
technology that we've used, someone can, you know, put, put
the, the, the probe on the heartif they want to look at a
parasternal lung axis. You put the probe on the skin
and now it, it immediately starts telling you where to,
where to place the probe to get that window and then how to
optimize the image. So it'll tell you, you know,
(10:45):
guide you and where to put the probe.
And then it'll grade your image and tell you that's a good
image, that's diagnostic qualityor that's not diagnostic
quality. And so you can kind of hone in
on, on what a good image is. And then also at the same time
it's telling you what the anatomy is, it's labeling it.
So for a new user who's trying to Orient themselves to, to
(11:07):
think of the image as a slice, you know, 2 dimensional slice of
the anatomy helps them to Orient, OK, I've seen this in a
book. I OK, that's the right
ventricle, that's the left ventricle.
So it helps with that second step, you know, it doesn't help
with interpretation, but it helps them to become more
proficient to know if, if, if I need, I know I want to look at
(11:30):
the valve. I want to look at this valve in
the, in this view of the heart. How do I get there?
The system will help to, to overcome that barrier.
And so, you know, we've several of us at the company who are not
clinical have trained ourselves with this very same AII know
exactly where my parasternal lung axis window is now by
muscle memory. I don't need the, I don't need
(11:53):
the AI to, to help guide me. But I think that's, that's one
key way that we employ AI and, and the reason we do that is to
really help new users to become more proficient.
And I think the other big barrier that we can help with
with AI is allowing expert usersto be more efficient.
(12:18):
So there's a lot on a system, onany given system, you let you go
back 1015 years ago and there is, you know, every capability
of the system was visualized as a button on the interface.
Now with touch screens, you don't have to visualize
everything. But then what do you do with
those buttons? How do they find that
functionality? And with AI, if as long as we
(12:41):
know, as long as the machine knows what the user's trying to
do, it can take away a number ofthose steps, a number of those
reasons why someone might have to interact with the with the
system. So like an ejection fraction is
a great example where you know you decide you want to do an
ejection fraction, it'll guide you to get the apical 4 chamber,
(13:04):
it'll capture that image automatically.
It'll guide you to the apical 2 chamber, it'll capture that
automatically and then run the report.
So as far as button pushes, you push auto EF and that's
virtually it from there on out until you until you're done.
So the impact there in terms of efficiency is you go from a two
(13:26):
to three minute exam on a legacycart system down to, you know,
less than 20 seconds. And again, that's it's not AI
for the sake of AI. It's, you know, I don't, I don't
pick up an ultrasound system as a, as a clinician to just to do
an ultrasound. I, I pick up an ultrasound
(13:48):
system to answer a question. So if we can help them get to
the question faster with this tool, then you know that that
impacts patient care in a in a pretty profound way.
Yeah, especially when it's urgent care.
So you guys are awesome. You support our programs by
providing systems. We've had the pleasure of
working with several of your systems and watch the
(14:08):
development over the last three years, I would say three to four
years of the AI technology and constantly updating us in our
systems to make sure that we have the latest and greatest.
And I have to say, using it in aeducation aspect, it's
incredible to see how it really helps with the confidence.
And so you have somebody who's scanning and they're looking at
(14:30):
an abdomen or they're looking atthe heart and they're not really
sure of the anatomy that they'reseeing on the image.
And then all of a sudden it justpops up and auto labels and
they're like, oh, wow. And then you just see, OK, OK.
And then it just, it really helps to start build that
confidence. And by the time I'm working with
them the following day on maybe a different system, I just see
the level of confidence that hasincreased both from obviously
(14:53):
the hands on skills training, but also because of the ability
to have that system. They're kind of walking them
through that scan and providing them that feedback without me
having to constantly be pointingto structures and telling them
they're just looking at the screen and interpreting what
they're seeing. And it's just, it seems very
just natural for them. And so I definitely have seen
(15:13):
that as a useful tool in education as well.
So. That's cool.
I mean, that's great to hear. You know, we're we're not always
able to to be in the room in those situations.
And you know, we hear it anecdotally, but it's it's it's
so validating to hear, you know,that that feedback.
I mean, it's certainly been beenour experience and and I think,
(15:35):
you know, some of us being proven out to and and some
recent research that's come out this year, you know, institution
LED stuff. So that Stanford, they doctor
Kumar, Andre Kumar did a really interesting study comparing a
group of new users. They had a a non AI system,
didn't provide any guidance, didn't provide any, you know,
(15:56):
instruction. And then they had an AI group
which was they were using the Cosmos product and the numbers
were striking in terms of image quality, scores were higher in
the AI group. Time to acquisition was faster.
They were more accurate in in diagnosing the the diastolic
(16:19):
dysfunction. I forget the word but diagnosis.
That sounds right. Was more accurate as well.
And you know, the only difference was they had the same
training, you know, all new users.
The only difference was was AI. So, and those are the, those are
the types of things that start to count, you know, can they get
(16:40):
the image quicker? Can they get a better quality
image? That's where again, it's they're
using the technology to answer aquestion.
If that question is answered quicker, if it's answered more
accurately, These things really matter in healthcare.
So that's that's, you know, that's why we're in the in the
AI game for sure. Especially even in in markets
(17:02):
too, like, you know, like we were talking earlier about EMS
and pre hospital, but also in family practice, you know, these
family practitioners have only several minutes dedicated to
each patient and stuff. And when you, you know, I think
a big misconception is that you're going to spend more time
with ultrasound when in fact you'll actually get your
patients in and out faster, especially utilizing technology
(17:22):
like this that you can get in, get them out the same day with
answers in the next step in thatdiagnosis.
And I always tie that back to reimbursement because patient
satisfaction scores are a huge part of reimbursement.
And think about how much happy you are when your physician put
the probe down on you, talk to you about what was on the
screen, what they're seeing saidI don't need to order a CAT scan
because I see this, our next step is this.
(17:45):
And I just think about what thatdoes for patient satisfaction,
not only outcomes, but satisfaction, because at the end
of the day, everybody knows in healthcare we have to make
money. So having higher patient
satisfaction means higher reimbursement.
Yeah, and you think too, you know, that there's the time of
the exam and you know, you do hear there's a lot I don't have.
You know, I've got 3000 patients.
(18:06):
I have 15 minutes with each one.I don't want to be fooling
around with the with an ultrasound system.
And you know, there's that, thatper exam time that that people
are afraid of taking too much ofthat.
And can I be proficient enough? And the other thing that that is
interesting, you mentioned patient satisfaction.
I mean, being able to get the answer right then and there is
(18:29):
enormously satisfying for patients.
And it's as well for, for the physicians, once they get to
that point, it's like, Hey, I can, I can get to that treatment
plan way sooner or I can have confidence again, back to the
confidence piece. And whether or not, you know,
if, if, if this person comes in and they're a little short of
breath and there's, there's an, and you know, and I suspect
(18:52):
something's going on with the heart.
And you take a look and you run an EF and you, you get a couple
calculations to decide, hey, yes, for sure we want to get a
full echo. Their EF is a little low or no,
or, you know, their heart's totally fine.
We don't have to order a full echo because that could mean
weeks before you could get get in for that full echo
(19:16):
appointment. Then you got to wait for the
results and you got to make another appointment with your
doctor. But if you can shortcut that as
a family practice practitioner, you know, it saves your patients
so much extra time and so much extra money and it saves the
system as well. I mean, there's, there's only,
(19:37):
there's a set number of, of cardiac stenographers, you know,
and I heard recently the number one reason that a full echo is
ordered is to get an ejection fraction.
So if, if you could, you know, there are patients who really
need that full echo. And if you can keep people out
(19:57):
that don't, that also helps the whole system and helps other,
you know, patients who really need that, that more advanced
exam to make sure that they havea spot.
So there's a lot of these thingsthat are kind of tied together.
Absolutely, which is bedside ultrasound in general, you know,
(20:18):
with or without AII mean the benefits of that are so far
reaching and, and can be life saving at times.
And so utilizing that, if you have a system that has AI, then
you know, that can augment your,your learning curve and help you
to feel a little bit more confident and have your
confidence to where you're, you're willing to actually
(20:39):
integrate that into clinical practice on a more frequent
basis than just here and there. And if you're only doing and
every once in a while, then you know, like anything, practice
makes perfect. So, but like Tricia said, you
know, we in our education environment as well, it
definitely is augments the educational experience as well,
because that's just reinforcing to the learner what they've had
(21:01):
taught to them and their didactic and their other
scanning skill set, you know, sessions.
And they, if they have a system with AI when they go back home,
the fear level is a little less because they know they're going
to have that capability to help them to re to reinforce that
this is the appropriate anatomy.I am getting the appropriate
(21:21):
view and and so forth. So, and to help with some of the
measurements that can be a little bit, you know, daunting
to some people. So it is a nice, definitely a
benefit to having that. Yeah, something I hear about a
lot, I'm curiously, you know, hear your, your thoughts on this
and the and the being educators.But you you hear a lot the, the
(21:44):
process to learning ultrasound is it's obviously it's a user
dependent technology. So you, you have to know, you
know those three things, how to use the system, know what you're
looking at and then you don't know how to interpret it as
well. But a lot of these clinicians
are on the job and so learning on the job is tough.
(22:05):
And so, you know, you think might go to a weekend workshop
or a course or something like that.
They go back into their practiceand there's this, this moment of
crap. That's exactly.
What it sounds like. Is this something that you hear
(22:25):
a lot about? Well, especially from the, the
very, you know, the very new first time they ever have a
transducer in their hand. There's, there's, you know,
there's fear in their heart for sure, you know, But you know, if
they, if they are able to devotea couple days to at least
getting the core basics to go back, we call it the friends and
family plan. You know, the more you scan, the
(22:47):
better you get. And you know, if you have a
system that has some extra benefits to help you be more
comfortable in what you're seeing and what's normal and
what's not normal and is that anappropriate view and that sort
of thing. It's definitely going to help
them to accelerate their learning curve to where they do
feel pretty comfortable just utilizing it every day.
(23:09):
And most of the time what we hear is I don't know how I've
gotten along without this for solong.
Now that I know, you know, I cango back and I can start scanning
and utilizing it for this, that and the other.
And then once I've done that, I'm now using it for other
things and it just starts, yeah,the utilization of it just
(23:31):
starts growing exponentially because they see the value.
We've become almost obsessed with it.
You're like, I can do this now. Now I want to try that.
Well, do you think I can learn how to do this?
And it just turns into the snowball.
And I think they just organically start using it more
and more and more. Right.
We've seen that and we were one of the first to offer emergency
ultrasound courses starting backin 1994 and that that market and
(23:58):
that now we're seeing the utilization growing
exponentially in family medicine.
And they're kind of where emergency medicine was, you
know, 20 years ago, but they're rapidly adopting the use of
ultrasound and residency programs are incorporating it.
And so the, the, the awareness is there and they want to use
(24:21):
it. But again, there's that level of
hesitancy because they don't know how to use it.
They, they aren't even really familiar with what's available
to them. You know, they just know I need
AI, need a handheld system, you know, So we, Casey and I were
just at the AFP meeting in October and there was great
interest there. And, but it was the same thing
(24:43):
over. I need the education.
I don't even know where to start.
I know I need a handheld. You know, all those questions
come out and so. I didn't know.
I don't think that I can get reimbursed for this.
Right, that was. A big AFP for that to hear that
was pretty interesting but and yeah, especially in it's
(25:03):
interesting seeing the trickle down effect now too, because you
know, like Laurie said in the emergency medicine setting and
critical care, they've been utilizing now for a couple
decades and everybody's kind of getting familiar with it.
And when we go to exhibit ASAP, it's people coming up saying I
can't thank you enough for this education.
Like it's literally like shaped and changed my careers.
Well now they're they know and they're so comfortable with
(25:25):
ultrasound they're expecting it before people are even
transported to the hospital. And so it's kind of trickling
down to EMS and pre hospital andhow are the technologies
communicating from infield to beable to get those images ahead
of time or have your infield operators like transmit that
data. So it's, you know, it's, it's
interesting seeing that progression of things.
(25:47):
And then same thing with family practice.
Like, you know, there's lot of practitioners that are dual
boarded and they're working in emergency medicine and family
practice. And now they're expecting their
other providers, you know, nursepractitioners, P as and stuff,
to be able to be at the same level as them, to provide the
same sort of diagnostic and treatment capabilities.
Yeah. Just to take it back to the
(26:08):
question, we just recently had apoint of care scan workshop and
we had a participant in who had never held a transducer in her
career. She was family medicine, you
know, dual certified, where she also does emergency medicine.
She's in a very rural location. And when she came in the door,
she was very hesitant, very shy.She didn't want to be the first
(26:30):
one to scan, you know, just, I've never done this before.
She kept apologizing for taking,you know, a long time to get an
image or to, you know, figure out the orientation of her probe
and having to correct her a lot,correct her hand placement and
things. And then by the end of day one,
I started to see the change, youknow, and that's what's the
benefit of a hands on class. You come in and you have expert
(26:53):
instructors who are guiding you and helping you with your hand
placement. And how do I win?
Gas is in the way. How do I get around that?
You know, we can have all the AIwe want, but at the end of the
day, you have to know technique and there's a technique to it.
And but I could see it building in her.
And then by the time day 2 started, she was like, oh, I
(27:14):
want to scan 1st. And I said, well, look at you.
Things have changed. And by the time she left at the
end of day, 212 hours of hands on scanning, she said, I cannot
believe how much I've learned intwo days.
I cannot believe how confident Ifeel to go back and integrate
this. But she did say, I'm thankful we
have the system we have because it does have certain technique.
(27:34):
She didn't say AI, but it was AI, certain technical aspects to
it. That will provide me some
feedback, guide me, we'll do these auto calculations for me
and I look forward to scanning on it because I know that I'll
have that to kind of supplement and reinforce what I've learned
here. So it was really cool to see
that progression in her over thecourse of the 12 hours she was
with us. It's amazing how important
(27:56):
confidence is in the equation. You know, and I, you know, I'm
not, I don't practice medicine, obviously, but I have, I've
experienced this, the confidencebarrier in my own profession.
So, you know, we'll go to conventions, we're going to
trade shows, we'll talk to physicians all day long who, you
(28:18):
know, who've been scanning for along time.
And I've always been nervous to scan myself in front of a
physician because that, you know, they see this, that what
if I, you know, can't find the window?
What if I can't, you know, don'trepresent the, the technology
well or this or that. So I always, you know, opt not
to until I started working here.So it's 15 years, you'd think
(28:40):
I'd get really good at something, right?
But I was still nervous. So I, I started using our trio
feature. And you know, an apical or a
parasternal long axis is pretty easy to get to just to unbutton
your shirt. And so I'm like, well, I'm going
to try to see how well it works.And honest to goodness, 5
(29:02):
minutes later I'm getting diagnostic quality according to
the, the rating. And you know, that took care of
this confidence thing for me because I knew I had something
there to tell me what to do. And if I got into trouble, if I
got way off, I could at least get back to Ground Zero and, and
start optimizing again. And so at that point, you know,
(29:24):
I don't, I don't hesitate at all.
I'm almost like, hey, you want to see it?
And they're like, yeah, that's fine.
It is very accurate too, I can say that.
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
What a great way to demonstrate.Yeah, yeah.
And it's just, it's one of thoselike, you know, and now I don't
need, I don't need the, the AI cuz I mean, I have the
(29:46):
advantage. I'm scanning myself so I can
feel exactly which rib and exactly which angle I have that
muscle memory. So I don't, I don't need it
anymore, So I can can turn that off.
And, and I imagine, you know, obviously I'm not, you know,
interpreting or, you know, anything like that.
Every patient's a little different, but it's just a
(30:07):
little peek into that experienceof I don't want to scan because
I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to look like a fool
to I know what I'm doing, you know, and just that that
transition was just me and the ultrasound system and, and, and
10 minutes of, of work and, and now I, I can't go back, right.
(30:28):
It's, yeah, it's not like I'm going to forget with muscle
memory. It's pretty long lasting.
So it's, yeah, it's, it's interesting to see that that
confidence piece can really prevent someone from taking that
step. You know, whether they're there
with a patient or at a workshop,whatever it gets to give them a
little bit of confidence to justtry it.
(30:50):
It builds from there. Yeah, for sure, like you were
saying. Well, you mentioned you know in
when you were just speaking the trio.
So why don't we transition and why don't you talk us a little
bit, tell us a little bit about the AI capabilities that are on
the Cosmos? Yeah, sure.
There's a there's a few different flavors that that we
have. And again, you know, we, we,
(31:13):
it's AAI and as if it's like this, this magical thing, it's,
you know, there's no magic involved.
It's, you know, I like how your,your student described it.
You know, it's a like technical assistance or, you know,
whatever. But yeah, there's a few
different flavors that that we employ. 1 is really directed at
helping new ultrasound users or novice, novice scanners to
(31:38):
become more proficient. And so it's, it's really
dedicated toward helping them to, to know how to do the a
particular gap exam or how to capture a particular image.
And so, so one of them is, is trio and with trio, because it's
doing three things kind of simultaneously.
So it's, it's, there's a little animation in the window and I
(32:01):
get guy is a shows a depiction of, of a, of a body and a
transducer on there. And it, it shows you how to, how
to move it, where to place it, you know, relative to, to the,
the body that you see in the, inthe animation.
So you know, tilt fan slide to kind of get you to the right
(32:22):
window. And then at the same time, it
has these 5 bars. The more bars, the better.
So if you're at one or two bars,the, the bars are colored red to
say, you know, you're not there yet.
And then once you get to 3 bars,they turn green and four bars
and, and five bars are, you know, perfect.
(32:44):
If you can get to 5 bars here, you're doing great.
So it's just kind of like there's a, you know, there's a,
it's fun to watch people use it because they're like, come on,
come on, 4 bars. And, you know, they're trying to
what, what those fine little movements they're seeing how
every little thing impacts the image quality.
And then the, the third thing it's doing is labeling the
(33:05):
anatomy in real time as well. So in this case, you're looking
at the, at the heart. We have 3 views for trio
personal lawn, apical 4 and apical 2.
And so it'll label all the anatomy of the heart in real
time. And I'll show you what the
valves are and, and the chambers.
(33:25):
And then we have, I guess still thinking of the on the, the, the
education side, we have a, what we call the fast AI.
And that one is for, for any part of the fast exam that you
would normally do, we have labeling of, of the anatomy
(33:48):
there. So the abdomen and then it'll,
you know, it'll label the view that you're in right upper
quadrant, left upper quadrant, etcetera.
IBC it'll you know, you know, label all that anatomy.
It won't label whether or not there's fluid in the abdomen,
but it'll, it'll label the spacewhere you know, fluid may
(34:09):
accumulate. So there's that's a fast AI.
Then we have a few others. So the auto EF is, is driven by
AI as well. So it, it incorporates trio and
then it's, it's taking you through The Simpsons, the
biplane Simpsons method, which is, you know, the gold standard
(34:29):
for, for EF. So it guides you to get the
apical 4 chamber, then the apical 2 chamber.
It'll auto capture those. Once you, you, you get the
quality that, you know, the diagnostic quality that, that we
need. And then it'll run that, that
report and it'll, it'll give youan ejection fraction and then
(34:51):
it'll show you the, the, the, you know, in that report window,
it'll show you the images that were captured.
You can tap into that and then adjust the tracing if you like,
and then recalculate based on those adjustments.
So there could the control is really all in your hands as a
user. And that one's really aimed at,
you know, there's an educationalelement for sure, but that one's
(35:11):
is definitely aimed at improvingthe efficiency of that exam.
You know, again, thinking of, ofpeople that don't have a lot of
time and you want to answer a question about, about the heart,
That's a very, very quick way to, to do that and to have that
confidence again, to kind of guide you to, to make sure
you're getting the quality that you need and, and the right
(35:33):
view. And then we have some, you know,
various other ways that we employ AI for, you know, if
you're doing a PW or CW trace tracing the waveform, we use AI
to to assist with that for VTi. And there's a lot more coming.
So yeah. That's exciting.
Well, the efficiency aspect of it definitely speaks to even the
(35:56):
more experienced sonographer or synologist that's performing the
exams because we do hear from some of our sonographers about
their fear of AI taking their job away from them, you know,
And so, you know, you have to try to educate the stenographers
as well as to how that's going to benefit them, help their
workflow, help them be more efficient.
(36:16):
You know, as far as quantitationgoes, especially in cardiac
ultrasound, you know, those, those little things can make a
difference in how long it takes you to get that exam done.
So, you know, I think that's something that really needs to
be expressed as well to not justthe novice benefits from it, but
the more experienced as well. Yeah, it'll definitely improve
(36:39):
workflow and efficiency even amongst the stenographers.
And, and I feel like it'll also help with those interpretations
from the radiology side of things.
You know, the radiologist or thecardiologist who's looking at
that study has additional information, you know, provided
thanks to the AI, those calculations and things that
were done. It's just more information.
(37:00):
I think anytime you're dealing with imaging and making medical
decisions based on imaging, moreis better.
You know, having something that's auto grading your image
and telling you, yes, this is a truly diagnostic image.
That can never be a bad thing. You know, you might not like the
feedback, right? That's fair.
But it's honest and it's gonna tell you that this is a great
(37:22):
image to perform this calculation.
And if you don't have it, you don't have it.
And sometimes there's not anything you can do.
But then you have the AI to support you when you go to your
cardiologist or radiologist to say, I'm sorry, I can't because
it's just not a diagnostic exam.Even the AI said so.
Right. So you the AI dolphin.
There's always a learning curve and everything that you do, and
(37:45):
there's no perfect answer, but you know, if you have some extra
tools in your toolkit to help you out, that can definitely
help you to expedite your learning curve as well as help
in your confidence building and also in the accuracy of your
exam. So I think it's a great thing.
(38:06):
But as we said, AI isn't everything.
It doesn't solve every single problem.
So why don't you talk to us a little bit about that as well?
Yeah, You know, I it's a it's like a hammer is great for
putting in a nail, but it's not great for pulling out a screw
or, you know, putting a window in a house or something like
(38:27):
that. So it is it's it's it's good for
some things, It's not good for everything.
And so I think that's where as acompany, we like to think of the
picture in a more holistic way. You know, and I think as, as
we're thinking about, you know, that's one of the reasons why
we've, we've also put more capabilities into, into this
(38:52):
system than what you might expect in a, in a handheld.
That's why we spent extra time optimizing the image to ensure
that it's the highest possible quality that physics would allow
us to, to create, right. So we use, you know, the gold
standard technology that's proven, you know, the, the
(39:13):
piezoelectric crystals are the best in terms of image quality.
And our heritage goes way back also.
I mean, we're not a this companydidn't just come out of nowhere.
Our heritage goes back. We have engineers from
developing the technology that Phillips uses from, from ATL.
We have engineers from so on thesite we have engineers from
(39:36):
Siemens. It's ASIC based technology,
which again is gold standard forultrasound.
So all of those things have to work as well.
And it's drop tested, it's shocked, it's baked, it's
frozen, it's, you know, highly, highly durable.
So that's why we you know, warranty the product for five
(39:57):
years. But you know, the, the
capabilities it it's important to, you know, I think the
industry. Over the years is sort of
developed technology that fits into boxes.
You know, we're we're humans, welike to categorize things.
And so the handheld products have a have a particular set of
(40:20):
capabilities. Your kind of mid range products
have a certain set of capabilities and your high end
products have another have another set.
And some of that just has happened, you know, as you know,
manufacturers want to have a, a lower cost option and a mid cost
option, a hike. And so the way you, you
(40:41):
differentiate products is by their capabilities.
So there are some, you know, your, your bigger companies that
have products in each of those 3categories.
They're going to keep the handheld low cost products
stripped down in terms of their capabilities and they're going
to unleash all of the capabilities possible and then
(41:02):
and the high end systems and there will be a premium for
that. We don't have a product in every
category. And so our thought is, you know,
why, why would we D feature thisproduct?
Why would we we hold it back when it could be so much more.
(41:22):
And so, you know, that's why we're the only handheld device
that has ACW Doppler, which is essential if you're going to do
a full echo, which you can do, you know, with our system.
And then, you know, so that the capabilities on the products
really important. It just helps you to answer more
questions. And so being something that that
(41:43):
has, you know, capabilities of the of the highest end systems,
but is as also has the, you know, some tools to make it very
accessible for new learners. It's something that you can get
while you're starting out, whileyou're learning, that's at a
price point that you can afford in those early days before
(42:06):
you're really able to justify the reimbursement and things
like that. But it's something you can grow
into. You don't have to graduate to
some other $100,000 system. What you bought, you know, now
is something you'll be able to use as, as, as a, you know, an
expert in the future. And then, you know, the other
thing that we've done to, to solve some of these problems
(42:28):
with it with a handheld, you know, a lot of institutions,
they don't they're, they sort ofput up with the the handheld
paradigm where I get the the probe from the company and then
I got to go find out what tabletto use.
And then I got to go find out a stand that will sort of hold
this stuff together so the tablet doesn't walk off.
(42:50):
And so the probe has a home. So one of the things we've done
as well to solve that as we've put all those things together,
we call it Cosmos Plus and you get our transducers.
We include a 13 inch iPad Pro and our our own custom medical
grade stand. You can plug in both transducers
(43:14):
at the same time. You can plug the whole system
into the wall and charge while you're scanning.
So it's, you know, it's, it has all of the same, you know, all
of the things you would expect out of, you know, a premium car
based system, but you don't haveto pay a premium for it.
So some of these things are, arealso, you know, they're again,
(43:34):
they're barriers to adoption that as a, as a company, as a,
as a problem solving, you know, entity, we can combine that
things and, and combine those things and make it so that much
easier. You know, they order, they do
one order it all comes in the box.
Put it all together once and youknow, we, we, we take off those
(43:56):
those extra steps for the end user.
Yeah, the car is really nice. You know, we've worked with a
number of different machines andI have to say that the Cosmos
car is a game changer because that holds your tablet for you.
If a place to rest your transducers, you know, and it's
just and you can plug both of them in, like you said, and just
(44:17):
toggle between, you know, the torso and the linear, the Lexa.
You just hit the button and and it goes right back and forth
between the two. So it's definitely a game
changer because there are times we're working with some other
handheld systems and it's like, OK, I need a tablet.
And when I now I need, like you said, the stand for the tablet.
Well, I need the charger for thetablet and I need, you know, and
(44:37):
then before, you know, you've got all these things.
Poor Casey. He's always the one of us to put
all this together for us. We're like Casey, I needed to
cast to a TVI needed to do this.He's just like, Oh my gosh.
Well. And practically too, I mean, if
you're in a clinical practice, if you're going to pull that
into of an ICU with, you know, patients that are, you know, in
critical condition, all of thoseextra cables start, are there a
(45:02):
lot of times they're neglected in terms of cleaning, you know,
and disinfection. So the more things you have to
sort of keep track of, the more things you also have to
disinfect. That's true.
And so if you you know streamlining, there's the simple
act of just streamlining it to where.
Yeah, we have. Can I pull this over our viewer?
Our listeners have the cart behind me, Let's just pull it
(45:24):
right in to our view. While she's pulling it over.
So I know that like your original ones were Android
based, we now have the iOS basedone.
Do users still have the ability to get an Android based if their
facility would require that? All right, good.
Yeah, Yeah, we're Android and iOS compatible for off the shelf
devices. And then, you know, those are
expensive devices. So one of the things you'll see
(45:47):
there is that that the stand head it, it locks the tablet
into place and then there's a key in the back.
If you're in if I can show. A volatile institution where
things like to walk away, you can lock that thing in place as
well. Yeah.
I think that's really important.It's nice that you kind of
outline those different featuresof your system because
(46:09):
especially for our, our novice listeners who are just getting
into utilizing ultrasound or thinking about using ultrasound,
you know, they're, they're kind of just going around asking some
general questions and, and many people just feel like, you know,
I just need a handheld. That's all I need, but they
don't really understand all how it all fits together.
(46:31):
And they need to really think about what kind of environment
am I going to be working in? What type of patient exams am I
going to be performing? And, and there are a variety of
handheld systems that are out there.
There's not just one which a lotof times people think there's
you know, only one XYZ system orwhatever, you know, and they
don't realize they don't know enough about it to make an
(46:53):
informed decision on that initial purpose purchase.
And that initial purchase may make, make a difference as to
whether they continue to use ultrasound and benefit their
patients if they didn't make theright choice.
So you know there is there is a a that's a good points that you
made. Yeah, there's a lot that goes
(47:14):
into it that, you know, especially as New Year's that,
you know, they don't think about.
Like you said, like this just came up the other day, our probe
doesn't have a battery in the, in the, in the, in the probe.
And so it gets all the power it needs from the, from the tablet
that that is plugged into. You might not think much about
that until you pick up the system.
(47:34):
You've got a charge tablet, you plug in the probe and, and the
probe isn't charged. So just having one less battery
to think about is, is another one of those, one of those
things, you know, the, you know,the wireless is a great
solution, but that means you've,you've got to have two, two
devices that you that have to remain charged.
(47:57):
And so, you know, they're just some of those those basic things
you might get in at a really lowcost startup cost, but then
what's the service like? You know, so that's where
something you can rely on for for five years versus something
that might not, you know, be as serviceable 2 years down the
road when something goes wrong. You know, those are all things
(48:19):
to think about A. Funny story, we had somebody
here at the point of care class and they brought their handheld
device and he made it a point tosay, I literally told my
administration I wanted a transducer I could put in my
pocket. And then he holds it up and the
transducer is small, but it's attached to this giant Apple
iPad Pro. And he's like, I can't put this
(48:42):
in my pocket. And I was like, yeah, but you
can put it on your phone. You can do it all sort.
And he's like, I can, you can use different platforms.
You don't have to use this gianttablet.
But I just thought it was funny that the people were making the,
a lot of the times don't have all this information, which is
why we do this podcast. Our podcast is for all
(49:02):
listeners, not just clinicians. So hopefully there's some
administrators out there who arelooking for some solutions who
are listening to this. And, you know, they don't know
the insurance and outs of these things.
They don't understand what they just did for that, you know, or
didn't do for that clinician by buying that expensive, very
expensive iPad Pro that was really nice but definitely won't
(49:25):
fit in his pocket most. Of the time purchasing
departments aren't don't have the medical background or even
the understanding as to what is really needed and they don't
even know the questions to ask. But it's, you know, that's
again, comes back to kind of getwhat, yeah, you know, unless you
really know what to ask for and how it's going to best, you
(49:47):
know, meet your needs. Well, that's why we do what we
do. By having companies like your
support our programs, you get toput this into practice and they
get to come here and learn. And not only are they learning
about integrating ultrasound, but they're learning about the
systems that they're working on and how will this meet my needs?
And they get to see it and hold it and scan with it and really
(50:09):
start to understand it in a different way and go home
feeling more informed to make a decision that will hopefully
lead to them integrating it fulltime.
And why we do these podcasts so that we can reach more people
and help to inform our listenersso that they can make
appropriate decisions that can impact them for a lot of years.
(50:31):
I mean, we only have so much money, right?
Can't keep going back and askingfor more money right away,
right? Right.
So yeah. Well, did you have something to
add, Casey? No, I was no say that, you know,
just like you were talking aboutthe capabilities of being able
to scan and charge at the same time.
(50:51):
So, you know, facilities that have high volume handhelds are
great and stuff, but you know, you have to look at what you're
realistically going to be scanning on a day-to-day basis.
So yeah, having this cart and stuff is definitely helps us in
an education setting for sure. Yeah, Yeah.
We, you know, we do hear about that a lot.
I think there there is, you know, like, like you said, you
(51:12):
know, you're one of your students came in and said I need
a handheld. But it's interesting because
there are no shortage of optionsthese days.
Right it. Wasn't always the case, but
there are there's ultrasound systems in every category and
they all emit sound waves and they all produce a 2D image and
you know so are they all equal? Well, it depends on your needs,
(51:34):
right? And so that's where a lot of
people are. You know, the tough part about
creating a new category is you have here, you know, we're
fighting against perception of well, it's handheld, therefore
it's. It's like every.
Other handheld or it you know, like, you know, just for
instance, the the the capabilities you you put that on
(51:57):
a stand got both transduced, yougot the two transducer ability
to connect them both at the sametime.
You got this massive, you know, 13 inch imaging screen on one of
the you know most state-of-the-art displays on the
market and you're getting that at 1/4 of the price of a of a
(52:21):
compact comparable pocus cart system.
And that's another thing that a lot of people don't know,
administrators aren't, aren't aware of yet is just how, yeah,
I could buy a, you know, fight. You know, we just had this
happen recently where an institution was going to be
buying several cart based systems and they found out about
(52:41):
our product and they thought I could save 3/4 of the price, get
all the same functionality, all the same transducers.
And I get AI on a stand for 1/4 of the price of what I was going
to pay for these other systems. And so I think that's where,
again, we're not, you know, behold into a particular class
(53:03):
just for the the sake of it. We're in the business of solving
problems. And if we can do that at A, at a
lower price point for, for someone who's looking at a high
end cart system, or if we can, you know, give someone who needs
the portability of a, of a, of ahandheld, you know, the, you
know, the ability to, to use it in that, in that use case, or
(53:29):
to, you know, marry it to a stand in and use it as you would
some other cart system. So it really can kind of play
that whole spectrum, which we think is a big advantage.
You know, that that people don'thave to say, well, I can, I can
only do these exams with this product.
Then if I want to do anything else and I've got to go find a
different product. And sometimes that's happening
(53:49):
with the same patient. And so if they can go from A-Z
without, you know, on one system, yeah, you know, we're,
we're hearing that that's a, youknow, that's a big advantage
that, that, that customers are, are appreciating.
And when you're, when somebody'slooking at systems and stuff,
one of the questions that does come up to is, is this a, you
know, do they purchase the equipment and then they have to
(54:10):
have a license to maintain it, to keep working it or is is it a
subscription or is it a single payment purchase?
How's that? Looking good questions.
Yeah, I mean, whatever option works best for you, we have, we
have that option. Most people go outright, they
buy the probe outright and the software outright and they don't
(54:30):
they don't have anything else toto worry about.
If if that price points a littletoo high, we do have options for
subscription or you know, if youwant to D feature the the
product and just do kind of 2D color PW, we have that option so
that the software capabilities are a la carte.
If you wish, AI capabilities are, are a la carte.
(54:54):
So yeah, there's but it there's no, there's no nest.
There's no need for any ongoing software.
There's no account required to use it.
It's, you know, once you have the product, you've, you've got
it for the life of the product. Excellent.
Great to know that's. Great.
Well, building on that, can you talk it, talk to us and our
(55:14):
listeners about the integration into the customer workflow?
So I purchased this product. What comes next?
Yeah, as far as like how are, how are people using it or what?
Yeah. Like how are they get, you know,
how do they basically go from the sale to the application?
What do you guys do to support the customer in that transition?
(55:37):
Just kind of like summarize. Yeah, with any purchase there's
a, there's an in service. So we'll, you know, we'll, we're
happy to meet virtually for, forany questions, but we typically
will be there on site to help put everything together and, you
know, make sure that we answer any questions or, you know, you
(55:58):
know, we can point out where thesettings are if you want to
integrate with your pack system.Perfect.
You know, how to set up the, theDICOM destinations and things
like that are, are often a question.
How does that work? Say, I mean, we're, we're very
hands on in that way. We're we're AUS based company.
(56:19):
So there's we are global though.So we're we we're in 74
different countries. Many of the countries outside of
the US are distributor based or partner based.
And so there are some differences in terms of exactly
how hands on we as a team are, but usually those those partners
(56:39):
are very hands on is in the sameway.
You know, we have a pretty high standard there.
So yeah. And you know, once you you get
the system, it's just as simple as downloading the app from the
App Store, plugging in the transducer and started scanning.
I think that initial, that initial scan, you'll need to
register the pro. So you'll need to be connected
(57:01):
to the Internet and then that'lljust check the licensing server
and just make sure that you knowall of your licenses are
activated. Yeah, and obviously we're huge
proponents of hands on skills training, you know, come to a
course, work with the experts, get that confidence.
But you guys have a lot of tutorials built in too, don't
you? We have, yes, we have some
(57:21):
tutorials on the system, there'sa little video library on kind
of getting started. But we, we really do lean on our
education partners like yourself.
I think we, we are very quick tosay we're, you know, we're not
going to try to be the experts and, you know, training how to
do the, the ultrasound exams. And you know, we, we point to
(57:44):
your organization, which comes very highly recommended and we
get a lot of great feedback for anyone that attends your
courses. But yeah, we point on our
website, we're quick to say, youknow, if you need ongoing
training, you know, on site, online, how you guys have a ton
of resources. So we always, we always highly
(58:05):
recommend your Gulf Coast. Thank you.
Very much for. That I know that that comes up a
lot like people don't typically understand like well why doesn't
if I'm paying this much why doesn't the education company
like have you know a credit education.
Well that's beyond your control.It's beyond our control.
That's the government's control and the AM as control, so they
(58:25):
you. Know keep it separate for a
reason. Equipment companies can't handle
accredited education. We can't handle equipment sales.
We maintain, you know, agnostic point of view and stuff and
we're there to to help learners how to use, how to actually
perform the ultrasound. You're there to provide the
newest, latest, greatest technology and that's why these
partnerships work really well. I don't think anybody could do
(58:46):
it all perfectly. It's just a better outcome for
the clinician and the learner tohave it be this way because this
is what we do. We educate, we train, that's
what we focus on, and you guys do what you do, which is make
incredible technology that makesit easier to use and more
efficient. So yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(59:07):
Yeah, we couldn't do without youguys.
I mean, it's there's, there's, you know, we could raise money
and, you know, create an education department and, you
know, create this powerful stuff.
But why? You know, I mean, you're, you,
you guys are great at what you do.
You're dedicated to it. Like you pointed out, it's it's
just, it's such a huge value that you know someone who needs
(59:31):
to learn how to use ultrasound, learns from people who all they
do is teach people how to use ultrasound.
I mean, we've seen it time and time again and other companies
and stuff for the past four decades.
You know, they exactly build an education department, pump
millions of dollars and time and, you know, new employees and
stuff into it. And then they realize it's OK.
(59:51):
It's not our wheelhouse. Like, let's pull back and then,
you know, come back to us. So we're.
Yeah. Yeah, right.
The resources can be better. Used we're we're pretty we're
pretty big on I mean, even we'renot, we're not, we're not a big
ego company. I guess, you know, we we very
quick to to partner with people that are better at doing
(01:00:12):
something than we are. So I think that that's like 19
Labs is a good example of that as a partner where they have a
whole telemedicine platform. Well, let's just integrate with
that rather than trying to buildour own and incorporate it and
build out a whole team and technology and spend millions of
dollars. But shoot, you know, we've got
(01:00:34):
an API, we have a whole softwaredevelopment kit, we can partner
and then boom. I mean, they were extremely
quick on that. And so, you know, same with,
with education, it just doesn't make sense for us to try to
reinvent the wheel when folks like you are constantly
innovating constantly, you know,refining your craft and, and
meeting users where they're at. I mean, that's, there's no way
(01:00:58):
we could catch up at this point in there.
There'd be, it'd be a wasted effort.
I think. And you know, in, in my opinion,
and I think I don't mean to shame any companies who are
doing, putting out, you know, educational content and whatnot.
I think that's totally fine. And for us, I'd rather, I'd
rather underpin your efforts andsend customers your way.
(01:01:19):
It's going to be a better use oftheir money.
And you know, and, and it allowsus to really stay focused on
what we're good at. We're staffed to redefine
ultrasound, you know, redefine point of care ultrasound.
We're not staffed to redefine education at this stage, so.
I like what you said too about your guys ego, because it's very
true. Like when you go, when we see
(01:01:40):
you guys at trade shows, you're everybody that I've interacted
with it at a company has been like super friendly, outgoing.
It's, you know, very welcoming type company willing to like
share whatever information you have and stuff and and you're
very customer centric. You don't have that like kind of
stuck up vibe that you can see from time to time and in other
sectors of healthcare and it's it's really nice like dealing
(01:02:02):
with a company like yours. Oh yeah, it's been a pleasure
from the beginning it. Has we really appreciate all of
the support you've provided for our company.
It's definitely, you know, without your support, we would
not be able to provide the levelof education that we do and the
hands on skills training, which is, you know, vital to the
learner's ability to go back andyou know, immediately integrate
(01:02:23):
the skills learn into clinical practice.
So we certainly appreciate your support and I think you did an
amazing job of summarizing all the benefits of your system and
features and how you really kindof in a class of your own known
as far as you know, identifying as a handheld and giving you the
(01:02:44):
to giving the features of higherend systems as well.
So I think that's important for our our learners to know and,
and to realize that when they'reout looking for a system, even
if they're thinking of it, Oh, Ijust need a handheld.
It's more than just needing a handheld.
You, you know, system, you need a system that's going to provide
the what what you need the technology you need to best
(01:03:07):
provide the care for your patients.
And that's going to be differentfor every clinician.
So they need to do their due diligence to figure out what
what system is that best for them.
And so. That's really well said.
Yeah. So I think this has been a great
discussion with with you Luke, and it's really been fun and
(01:03:31):
informing to hear more about thesystem for our learners to hear
more about not only just their capabilities in the POCUS world,
but also how you've integrated AI to improve efficiency, to
help in the training of novice users, helping the efficiency of
the more seasoned stenographers and and basically to help
(01:03:51):
improve overall patient care. So I think that, you know your
the goal of these advancements is really to help physicians and
healthcare providers to rapidly,rapidly diagnose and treat their
patients and that does result with improved patient outcomes.
So we really appreciate you joining us here today and
sharing all of this exciting information with us.
(01:04:14):
Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me.
I really appreciated the conversation.
Really fun to talk with you all.Yeah, it's been a lot of fun and
we look forward to doing it again.
And we'd also like to thank all of our listeners.
You guys have always just been so great to us and so loyal.
So thank you for being with us today.
Make sure that you subscribe to the Sonography Lounge podcast,
visit us on social media so thatyou don't miss a single episode,
(01:04:36):
and we hope that you have a great day and happy scanning.
Thanks for listening to The Sonography Lounge.
Don't forget, if you like this episode, please subscribe and
leave us a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts. You can also find us on
Instagram at Sonography Lounge and Twitter at Sonography LNG.
(01:05:02):
If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions,
feel free to send an e-mail to us at
sonographylounge@gmail.com. Have a great week and scan,
scan, scan.
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