Prenatal ultrasound platform Sonio integrates with Pediatrix Medical Group

Pediatrix is a provider of highly specialized health care for women, children and babies

Fetal ultrasound is a routine part of prenatal care in the U.S. as it can check for defects or other problems in the fetus. Yet, birth defects affect 1 in 33 babies born in Europe and in the US and, in 50% of these cases, the defects had not been detected during the ultrasound. Obviously, this is an area of healthcare that needs improvement. 

Sonio is looking to make prenatal sonographers and ultrasound readers better through the use of artificial intelligence, helping them better at performing prenatal examinations, with the aim of simplifying and streamling ultrasound workflows, while ensuring quality assurance, and clinical outcomes for patients.

It main product, Sonio Detect, is an FDA-cleared AI medical device that, in real-time, receives fetal ultrasound images and clips from the ultrasound machine, which are submitted through the Sonio Edge Software by the performing healthcare professional.

Now the company will be able to get its technology into the hands of more physicians, and in use for more patients, as it announced on Wednesday that it will be deployed by Pediatrix Medical Group, a Miami-based provider of highly specialized health care for women, children and babies.

"As a national provider of maternal-fetal medicine services, Pediatrix cares for a large spectrum of high-risk pregnancies and provides obstetric ultrasound services to a large volume of pregnant women," Dr. Alan Fishman, Specialty Medical Officer for Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Pediatrix, told VatorNews. 

Pediatrix selected Sonio AI as its ultrasound reporting system due to its unique technology and cloud-based architecture, he said. 

"Their commitment to help devise solutions will allow us to streamline sonographer workflow and experience by utilizing automation to reduce redundant tasks; enhance provider workflow and satisfaction by displaying images for review that have been presorted by the system into a logical and standardized viewing order; and enhance our quality improvement efforts with automated and objective image criteria that can provide feedback to our clinicians."

Founded in 2020, the Paris-based Sonio’s goal is to support practitioners around the globe in prenatal screenings and diagnosis by ensuring the completeness of their examination with increased accuracy. 

Sonio Detect can automatically detect views, as well as anatomical structures within the supported views, and then automatically verify quality criteria of the supported views by checking whether they conform to standardized quality criteria.

The company also offers Sonio Expert, a non-medical device Clinical Decision Support AI software that empowers Maternal-Fetal Medicine (MFM) practices to diagnose ultrasound-visible fetal anomalies/diseases and related pathological syndromes during performance of prenatal sonography, as well as Sonio Pro, a medical image communications device and provide simple image review software functionality for medical image processing and manipulation.

The company also addresses workflow challenges by integrating with electronic health records, billing systems, and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS).

Pediatrix has initially implemented Sonio’s platform in its San Jose, CA, MFM practice, but will be expanding that soon. 

"We are just beginning our beta site implementation and, currently, plan a rollout across our maternal-fetal medicine practices over the next two years," said Fishman.

(Image source: sonio.ai)