
In African Villages, Phones Can Become Ultrasound Scanners - yodaiken
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/health/medical-scans-butterfly-iq.html
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veza
This is beautiful. As a developer this is the kind of app I would like to work
on, that has a direct good impact on people's life.

I know there are all kinds of lists on github.

Is there a list of companies that are inherently good (I know it's subjective)
and are hiring developers?

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joshz404
As an engineer working in non-profit health, just remember the grass is always
greener.

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watermans
Does this mean you feel that your work is not altruistic?

Would you mind elaborating on that? Some days I feel like I’d rather work for
a non-profit than where I am.

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kryogen1c
Having worked in a government organization (military) for 10 years, i will
guess.

I think the point is not that one is not better than the other, simply that
they are different. Each coin has two sides, and double edged swords cut both
ways.

If youre flush with cash, you might feel void of meaning. If youre helping
children, you feel fulfilled but frustrated by what little it would take to
accomplish so much more.

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Aromasin
Reminds me of the Japanese idea of 'Ikigai' [1]. Basically what you describe -
most careers end up fulfilling you in one way, but leave you devoid in
another.

[1][http://theviewinside.me/what-is-your-
ikigai/](http://theviewinside.me/what-is-your-ikigai/)

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mariagor
Hi guys, Butterfly is growing and we are hiring senior engineers on a variety
of teams! Check out some openings here
[https://careers.smartrecruiters.com/4Catalyzer/butterfly-
net...](https://careers.smartrecruiters.com/4Catalyzer/butterfly-network)
Also, feel free to send me an email or send your application directly to my
email maria@butterflynetinc.com

~~~
etjossem
For even more context here: they're part of a biotech incubator called
4Catalyzer. The other companies are also working on potentially life-changing
products too, including cancer drugs and seizure detection.

Lots of possible roles, take a look!

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frandroid
Goodbye to India's hopes to control ultrasound scanning of pregnant women to
prevent gender selection. :(

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connorcodes
I am glad people are using butterfly in remote areas rather than just _in
hospitals_ where they already have the ultrasound tech.

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_trampeltier
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14869138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14869138)

2 years ago build somebody a simple ultrasonic scanner with a Raspberry Pi.

Anyway it's great. A lot of such tech is just expensive .. because it is since
ever and customer pay the price.

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ggm
This is the kind of investment in technology I think Bill & Melinda Gates
should be remembered by, as well as their investment in vaccines and
contraception. Great stuff ( and well done to the inventor)

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jwr
I had similar thoughts, but then I started realizing that investing in
fighting malaria or cheap ultrasound scanners will matter little if in 30-50
years much of our planet becomes uninhabitable, which is now nearly certain
unless we take immediate action.

These days I think almost all resources should be thrown into inventing and
developing carbon capture technologies.

I don't mean to belittle the achievement or sound harsh, but when thinking of
priorities one has to consider what will happen if something is _not_ done.

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Gibbon1
All these things need to be done. My thoughts center around how do you provide
a decent sustainable existence for the other 2-3 billion people on earth[1].
There are a lot of things that need to be done to make that happen. Really
affordable basic healthcare is one of those things.

[1] Hint we can't do this via the raw growth and exploitation used to lift the
first billion people out of poverty.

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jwr
Yes, all these things need to be done. But, again, most of these things will
matter little if in 30-50 years much of our planet becomes uninhabitable,
which is now nearly certain unless we take immediate action.

Those 2-3 billion people on earth you mentioned? Most of those live in the
tropical zones and if we do not concentrate on fighting climate change NOW,
will not have a place to live. Healthcare will be a secondary issue.

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rmason
Fun fact - Tim O'Reilly tweeted that this tool came about from a discussion at
one of his FOO Camps.

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ToBeBannedSoon
I don't understand why this ultrasound scanner needs a user license except for
exploitative reasons. It's what crooks would do.

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jes
Ultrasound systems are medical devices. There are limits on power levels for
patient safety and to ensure efficacy. To my knowledge, licensing here is an
attempt to protect patient safety.

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ToBeBannedSoon
Phony argument. An electronic thermometer and blood pressure monitor ensure
safety too and they never need a license. Do x-ray machines need a license?
This ulrasound device by definition doesn't even emit radiation. This company
is conning its users.

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atpat
If you actually read the FAQ on the website
([https://www.butterflynetwork.com/pricing](https://www.butterflynetwork.com/pricing))
you'll see that you don't need a license to continue using the product:

> Your Butterfly iQ will remain functional even without a subscription. You
> can continue to scan in all 19 applications, but will not be able to upload
> new images. You will have full access to all images in the cloud that were
> previously saved.

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ToBeBannedSoon
They're forcibly charging for the first year of cloud subscription, and this
still makes it a con.

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1023bytes
Only works with Apple products? That's rather out of touch.

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tim333
Guess if you can afford a $2000 scanner you can afford a $200 used iPhone.

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aaron695
It has nothing to do with the phone or the software it's the device, which if
you could get down to a hundred $ or so it could be used by farmers of
livestock.

This could be a revolution, but the Ultrasound Scanners need to be in the
hands of low income farmers then imagine how quickly the dam ecosystem would
develop across to humans.

I've been looking to get a cheap one from China, but you can't, I'm not sure
why, but perhaps it needs a certain chip that is not made cheaply yet. There
are DIY's around but seem immature.

If you want to change the world, get the price down for use on animals.

This is a good first step, but while the medical community is in change it'll
move at a snail pace which means a lot of people will die.

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mtw
I'm not sure you can mass market it. You need medical knowledge to make sense
of ultrasound images. Unless you plan to use it for something else than
medical

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bluGill
A lot of farmers have a surprising amount of medical knowledge. It is common
for farmers to do a lot of simple medical procedures on their animals. Large
farmers in the US already have ultrasound machines for their cows - they don't
need to know everything about how to read them to know signs that mean call in
help (thus saving a lot of money)

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close04
Knowledge of animal anatomy or certain medical procedures are no help in
trying to decipher an ultrasound image. I don't think you can just plop an
ultrasound scanner into a farmer's hands and have them to do anything truly
useful with it, to justify the investment. Not without training.

One option would probably be to have a doctor remotely in a "command center"
just looking at these as they are uploaded from the field, and relaying the
diagnosis back to the farmer.

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bluGill
How much training do you need though: A one day class can cover "this is is
normal, this is where you need help". Of course these are animals: farmers are
willing to make economic decisions here. The risk/cost of a rare disease going
undetected vs time to learn how to accurately diagnose it (or pay someone who
has the training) is something that can be talked about.

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close04
> A one day class can cover

...probably not much more than a 1 day C++ course would offer a random person.
:)

That's nowhere near what a farmer needs to read much into an ultrasound. It
takes a medical student years of learning (medicine) topped by a lot of
practice and experience in imaging until they are useful in actually reading
an image. And even a 1-2 day course costs thousands of dollars.

It would be a massive expense for very little real life benefit. I'm guessing
AI and a remote doctor would do better. I kept reading a lot of good news
recently about AI helping with diagnostics in medical imaging so I guess we
can't be too far.

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tonyarkles
Over the weekend I had a veterinarian tell me that he wasn’t capable of
properly interpreting an ultrasound! He did an x-ray and saw something
concerning, but being Easter weekend there were no ultrasound techs in the
office. I had to take my cat to a different clinic, where a pro successfully
figured out what was going on.

I agree fully that a 1-day course isn’t going to be enough here. Radiologists
go to school for a while to get good at both the imaging part and the
interpretation part.

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u543fds
First time that I see that something can be connected to an IPhone. I wonder
if you need special privileges from Apple, or there is an API available that
can do some data (serial ?) transfer.

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saagarjha
I don’t think there is any public API for this: you probably have to be in the
MFI program to send data through the Lightning port.

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Maxious
"iOS app developers do not need to join the MFi Program. Everything app
developers need is in the External Accessory Framework"
[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/externalaccessory/...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/externalaccessory/easession)

Technically there is a serial cable you can buy for hobbyist/personal/internal
use but "Under current Apple policy this cable may not be used with apps sold
on the App Store." [https://redpark.myshopify.com/products/serial-
cable-l2-db9v](https://redpark.myshopify.com/products/serial-cable-l2-db9v)

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saagarjha
I thought the hardware manufacturer needed to get MFI approval allow for
developers to distribute apps that rely on ExternalAccessory?

