GE HealthCare will spend about $51 million in cash to acquire artificial intelligence assets from Intelligent Ultrasound Group, with tech that provides real-time support to clinicians during OB/GYN exams.
Intelligent Ultrasound’s ScanNav software has already helped bolster GE HealthCare’s scanners, through the SonoLyst image recognition programs deployed on the latter’s Voluson family of machines, for example.
With the transfer of ownership, GE HealthCare said it plans to incorporate that AI—as well as systems for highlighting anatomy during nerve-blocking anesthesia procedures—across its broader ultrasound portfolio, including outside of women’s health.
“I really believe that we are at the start of a wave of AI making a profound difference to medical imaging, and especially ultrasound,” said Intelligent Ultrasound’s chief operating officer, Nick Sleep, who will join GE HealthCare after the deal’s expected closure in the fourth quarter of this year.
GE HealthCare pitched the buy as a complement to its previous $150 million purchase of Caption Health. That former Fierce 15 winner developed real-time, AI-powered coaching software that helps technicians capture clear images of the heart and lungs.
The U.K.-based Intelligent Ultrasound, meanwhile, will hold onto its ultrasound simulation and education business—which includes training protocols for echocardiography, pediatrics and transvaginal exams, as well as guided needle insertions.
In a statement aimed at shareholders, Intelligent Ultrasound Chairman Riccardo Pigliucci said the choice to sell off assets that the company had spent more than seven years developing wasn’t an easy one.
“When GE HealthCare offered us £40.5 million to acquire our Clinical AI Business, we were pleased that our achievements were recognized but it presented us with the very difficult decision to exit the main market we had chosen for our future growth,” Pigliucci said.
“To date, the growth of our current ScanNav-related clinical AI revenues has been slower than we had originally expected and, most importantly, insufficient to fund the developments needed to materially increase the value of the Clinical AI Business,” he added. “We have had to recognise that developing products such as ScanNav FetalCheck for gestational age estimation and ScanNav Liver is costly and would require the sort of funding levels that are outside the Group’s current cash resources or capital raise capabilities.”