What is the Butterfly iQ+?

What it is

The Butterfly iQ+ is a handheld ultrasound device made by Butterfly Network, a US company in Burlington, Massachusetts, founded in 2011. Unlike a hospital ultrasound cart, it is a single probe that plugs into a smartphone or tablet.

What makes it different

Its defining feature is the Ultrasound-on-Chip: Butterfly replaced the traditional piezoelectric crystals inside an ultrasound probe with a semiconductor chip. That is what lets one small probe cover the whole body, from cardiac to abdominal to lung scans, where older machines often needed several probes.

Is it a robot?

Not in the walking-and-driving sense. On the registry it sits in the biometric category: it is an AI-assisted medical imaging device, not an autonomous machine. The intelligence is in the imaging and the guidance software, not in independent movement. It is FDA-cleared for 13 clinical applications and is in real-world commercial use; DEPLOY records verified deployments in South Africa and Kenya, where portable ultrasound extends care beyond hospital settings.

For pricing, see How much does the Butterfly iQ+ cost?.