Summary:

• In this blog, Hyperfine, Inc. President and CEO Maria Sainz discusses the transformative Swoop portable MR brain imaging system, highlighting the system’s impact on patient experience and care.
• The Swoop system is designed for use at the patient’s bedside in various clinical settings without needing a shielded room, making MRI scans available, accessible, and affordable—and less stressful for patients.
• Maria Sainz envisions the Swoop system expanding into diverse clinical applications, indications, and healthcare settings globally, akin to the widespread adoption of external defibrillators​​.

Maria Sainz

Recently, Hyperfine, Inc. President and CEO Maria Sainz, joined Omar Ford, host of the Let’s Talk Medtech podcast, to discuss why the Swoop^_® Portable MR Imaging^_® system is changing the way we think about MRI.

In this podcast, Maria also shares tips on leading a medtech company.

When asked about the Swoop system and how it’s so transformative, Maria shared, “Conventional MRI is an interesting experience. It requires a hospital or a clinic to provide a very shielded and protected room. Very often in the basement, patients actually have to go inside that tunnel. And for the most part, it's a bit of a traumatic patient experience … I would say there's somewhere between 30 [million] and 40 million MRI scans performed every year, and of those, somewhere between six [million] and 9 million of them are in the brain. So clearly there's tremendous medical utility and diagnostic value to performing the scans. Where [the] Swoop [system] comes in is totally transforming that experience for the providers, the clinicians, and the patients.

“In that we bring the MRI to the patient, we do not require a shielded environment. [The Swoop system] is on wheels. It can go from one critical care unit to another, across the hallway, down an elevator, through hospital doors … it just goes right behind a critical care patient bed, and the patient's head is scooched into our unit. The scan is performed there with most of the equipment still connected to the patient without any transport, and the ability to then get clinically relevant imaging to be able to make a clinical decision right there and then. So, we transform MRI, by making it available, accessible, affordable ... The patient experience is also very different. You could hold the hand of a patient while they're having a scan and comfort them and make sure that they feel everything is okay. We hear that often when the scanned patient is a child and their parents can hold their hand.”

Later, when asked about her vision for Hyperfine, Inc. and the Swoop system, Maria shared, “I see two ways in which the Swoop [system] is going to evolve. First across a variety of clinical applications or indications, and then into a very wide variety of sites of care, which, as you think about taking it globally, just multiplies. Given the infrastructure that exists in some countries around healthcare, we're talking about anywhere from a critical care unit now down to the emergency department out into community clinics that don't have a scanner today, possibly on mobile care units and on and on and on. It reminds me a little bit of my experience with external defibrillators, where they used to be on a big cart in a hospital just to get a patient back from a cardiac arrest. And now there is one right outside my door in a little red canvas bag strapped to the wall in case one of our employees here has an event. So, I can't wait for the day where Swoop [systems] are literally everywhere.”

We invite you to listen to the full interview with Maria Sainz below. We also invite you to explore our website to learn more about the benefits of the Hyperfine, Inc. Swoop Portable MR Imaging^® system.

Click here to Listen to the Let’s Talk Medtech Podcast