aium communities

Every ultrasound specialty. One professional network.

Is anyone using any of the new "hand held" portable ultrasound units in their practice? Do you think it will become mainstream?

Views: 86

Replies to This Discussion

Our dept is currently trialing/beta-testing one manufacturer's prototype. Truly hand-held units --as opposed to those only hand-carried ("HCUs")-- will eventually become mainstream. What'll limit the ongoing shrink won't be electronics/memory, but practicable screen size for the eye of the human operator.

Peter J. Mariani MD
Professor of Emergency Medicine
SUNY Upstate Medical University
Syracuse NY 13210
http://www.upstate.edu/emergency/faculty.php?ID=marianip
What machine do you currently use at your facility?
We currently use Sonosites (Titan and MTurbo) as standard clinical purpose units.
The ultra-small prototype was eval'd under proprietary agreement with its manufacturer.
--PM
Peter,

Although screen size may limit units getting smaller, aren't the current hand held units small enough? I can see putting a v-scan in my pocket on shift. On the other hand, It would be even simpler to have a probe that plugs in to my iPhone's headphone port....

Phil
For my purposes of ED or hospice home visits, current standard portable machines are plenty small enough for me. If I were trekking in the 3rd world bush or perhaps passing an instrument down a test shaft to Chilean miners, the philosophy might be "You can never be too rich or too small." I agree there'd be little gain to going smaller than an iPhone CPU/screen.
--PM
Although these new machines are convenient and portable, they generally lack easy ways to input patient data, send images to a server, etc. As image storage requirements become more of an issue (billing compliance, QA, etc.) it may be more difficult for providers to "get away" with studies that are not documented. These small devices bring up lots of interesting questions as well as great promise- echoes of the debates surrounding the first portable machines in the 1990s.

RSS

© 2012   Created by AIUM.

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service