New products

GE Vscan portable imaging device

General Electric’s Vscan is an ultrasound device not much bigger than a smartphone. It weighs less than a pound. The demo of a prototype in October 2009 by Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt (pictured) at Web 2.0 received a lot of media attention at the time. Since then Vscan has received the Medical Device License from Health Canada and similar approval in the U.S. and the EU and is now commercially available in Canada, the U.S., Europe, and India. It was used at the Vancouver Olympics Games in the medical emergency unit extension of the Whistler Polyclinic in support of athletes, trainers and visitors.

Despite its small size, Vscan houses powerful ultrasound technology that provides clinicians with an immediate, non-invasive method to help secure visual information about what is happening inside the body. Vscan is portable and can be taken from room to room easily to be used in many clinical, hospital or primary care settings. It likely to prove valuable to primary care physicians and those specializing in cardiology, critical and emergency care and women’s health, as well as hospitalists.

According to Peter Robertson, General Manager of GE Healthcare Canada, “Vscan is a non-invasive tool that can help physician’s perform more focused physical exams and provide additional information with immediate visual validation, which may help speed diagnoses, reduce patient wait-times and improve physician workflow.”

An online portal provides Vscan users with training tools for the product and basic clinical applications with sections about imaging technique, anatomy and trouble shooting. The user interface can be controlled using the thumb. The battery life is good for one hour of scanning, enough for 30 patients at an average of two minutes per scan. It has a USB docking station to link to a PC and to export data.

The Vscan costs $8,000 in Canada.

Posted March 4, 2010