Medical University of South Carolina joins forces with Butterfly Network to transform patient care, health education, and medical research

Butterfly Blueprint™ to enable MUSC clinicians, students, and researchers to redefine how AI-powered, handheld ultrasound can be used in innovative ways to benefit patients at the point-of-care

Butterfly Network, Inc. (NYSE: BFLY), a digital health company transforming care with handheld, whole-body ultrasound, and The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) announced today that MUSC will leverage Butterfly Blueprint,™ the company’s system-wide ultrasound platform. Together with Butterfly, MUSC aims to transform patient care, health education, and medical research by empowering its clinicians, students, and researchers with point-of-care access to AI-powered, handheld ultrasound.

“At MUSC, we strive to stay on the front-end of innovation to advance how we educate and train healthcare providers and serve the people of South Carolina,” said Patrick Cawley, M.D., MUSC Health CEO and executive vice president of Health Affairs, University. “With Butterfly’s technology, we’re empowering care teams to know more about what’s going on with a patient sooner by quickly and easily gaining visibility inside the body so they can make more informed care decisions. We’re excited to bring such an evolved point-of-care ultrasound tool to our health system. We believe it will have tremendous impact across all care settings and especially in our rural and underserved settings, where access to specialists and imaging can be very difficult for some patients to manage or afford.”

As the world’s first and only whole-body Ultrasound-On-Chip™ technology capable of turning a compatible smartphone or tablet into an imaging tool, Butterfly enables the practical application of ultrasound information into the clinical workflow of all healthcare practitioners. Butterfly enables image acquisition and interpretation of different areas of the body and can be used for things like automated bladder volume calculations with 3D visualizations and to ease and guide central line placement and injections. The device fits in a healthcare professional’s pocket and is powered by a unique combination of cloud-connected software and hardware technology, easily accessed through a mobile app.

MUSC executive vice president for Academic Affairs and provost Lisa K. Saladin, PT, PhD, agreed, adding: “It is critical that we provide our students opportunities to train with advanced technologies that they will be using to assess and treat patients both during their clinical rotations as students and after graduation as healthcare providers. We are excited about this collaboration and the opportunities it will provide for our students.”

MUSC will begin its Butterfly rollout initially focusing on practitioners and clinicians at MUSC Health Florence Medical Center, MUSC Health Marion Medical Center, and at the No. 1 hospital in South Carolina as named by U.S. News & World Report, Charleston-based University Medical Center. A major component of the affiliation will be defining new models of care in rural settings with the help of this technology, hence the immediate deployment at two of the hospitals in MUSC’s Regional Health Network: Marion Medical Center and Florence Medical Center. At the same time, MUSC will also work with Butterfly to incorporate point-of-care ultrasound training across the organization, including within its education curriculum for medical students, nurse practitioners, and physicians’ assistants, in addition to exploring areas for clinical research.

“It is an incredible opportunity to partner with MUSC in our shared objective of improving clinical decision-making with an easy-to-use, AI-enabled imaging tool that is accessible at the point-of-care," said Todd M. Fruchterman, M.D., Ph.D., Butterfly Network’s president and CEO. “Together with MUSC, we’re thrilled to explore how Butterfly can enhance patient care, advance medical education, and model a new standard of care delivery for the next generation of clinicians and care teams. We believe the information that becomes available when Butterfly is deployed at scale has the power to improve diagnostic accuracy and efficiency across care settings and throughout an enterprise.”

To learn more about Butterfly Blueprint™, the platform MUSC will deploy, please visit https://www.butterflynetwork.com/blueprint or to view a demo of Butterfly iQ+ please visit https://www.butterflynetwork.com/.

About Medical University of South Carolina

Founded in 1824 in Charleston, MUSC is the state’s only comprehensive academic health system, with a unique mission to preserve and optimize human life in South Carolina through education, research and patient care. Each year, MUSC educates more than 3,000 students in six colleges – Dental Medicine, Graduate Studies, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy – and trains more than 850 residents and fellows in its health system. MUSC brought in more than $327.6 million in research funds in fiscal year 2021, leading the state overall in research funding. MUSC also leads the state in federal and National Institutes of Health funding, with more than $220 million. For information on academic programs, visit musc.edu.

As the health care system of the Medical University of South Carolina, MUSC Health is dedicated to delivering the highest quality and safest patient care while educating and training generations of outstanding health care providers and leaders to serve the people of South Carolina and beyond. Patient care is provided at 14 hospitals with approximately 2,500 beds and five additional hospital locations in development; more than 350 telehealth sites, with connectivity to patients’ homes; and nearly 750 care locations situated in all regions of South Carolina. In 2021, for the seventh consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report named MUSC Health the No. 1 hospital in South Carolina. To learn more about clinical patient services, visit muschealth.org.

MUSC and its affiliates have collective annual budgets totaling $4.4 billion. The nearly 25,000 MUSC team members include world-class faculty, physicians, specialty providers, scientists, students, affiliates and care team members who deliver and support groundbreaking education, research, and patient care.

About Butterfly Network

Founded by Dr. Jonathan Rothberg in 2011 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange through a business combination with Longview Acquisition Corp., Butterfly created the world's first handheld, single probe whole-body ultrasound system using semiconductor technology, the Butterfly iQ+. Butterfly's mission is to democratize medical imaging and contribute to the aspiration of global health equity, making high-quality ultrasound affordable, easy-to-use, globally accessible, and intelligently connected, including for the 4.7 billion people around the world lacking access to ultrasound. Through its proprietary Ultrasound-on-Chip™ technology, Butterfly is paving the way for earlier detection and remote management of health conditions around the world. The Butterfly iQ+ can be purchased online today by healthcare practitioners in the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Butterfly iQ+ is a prescription device intended for trained healthcare professionals only.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company’s actual results may differ from its expectations, estimates, and projections and, consequently, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Words such as “expect,” “estimate,” “project,” “budget,” “forecast,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “may,” “will,” “could,” “should,” “believes,” “predicts,” “potential,” “continue,” and similar expressions (or the negative versions of such words or expressions) are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the Company’s expectations with respect to financial results, future performance, development of products and services, and the size and potential growth of current or future markets for its products and services. These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Most of these factors are outside the Company’s control and are difficult to predict. Factors that may cause such differences include, but are not limited to: the impact of COVID-19 on the Company’s business, including issues relating to Omicron or other variants; the ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the business combination; the Company’s ability to grow and manage growth profitably; the success, cost and timing of the Company’s product and service development activities; the potential attributes and benefits of the Company’s products and services; the degree to which our products and services are accepted by healthcare practitioners and patients for their approved uses; the Company’s ability to obtain and maintain regulatory approval for its products, and any related restrictions and limitations of any approved product; the Company’s ability to identify, in-license or acquire additional technology; the Company’s ability to maintain its existing license, manufacture, supply and distribution agreements; manufacturing and supply of the Company’s products; the Company’s ability to compete with other companies currently marketing or engaged in the development of products and services that the Company is currently marketing or developing; changes in applicable laws or regulations; the size and growth potential of the markets for the Company’s products and services, and its ability to serve those markets, either alone or in partnership with others; the pricing of the Company’s products and services and reimbursement for medical procedures conducted using its products and services; the Company’s estimates regarding expenses, revenue, capital requirements and needs for additional financing; the Company’s financial performance; the Company’s ability to raise financing in the future; and other risks and uncertainties indicated from time to time in the Company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K or in subsequent filings that it makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company cautions that the foregoing list of factors is not exclusive. The Company cautions you not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company does not undertake or accept any obligation or undertake to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in the Company’s expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220524005130/en/