Butterfly Network, a digital health company headquartered in Guilford, Conn, announced that the World Economic Forum (WEF) has named the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2015. The company reportedly received the award for improving access to diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasound technologies worldwide, helping to democratize medical imaging, and for developing next-generation devices that enable noninvasive surgery.

The company works at bringing together devices, learning, and cloud computing to help advance diagnostic and therapeutic imaging. Butterfly integrates its imaging platform with learning and the cloud, enabling its devices to create a virtual cycle. The company’s products are designed to improve access to ultrasound by making it easier to use, while also reducing ownership and operation costs.

Butterfly Network’s technology platform is said to yield low-cost imaging devices. Its smart devices learn as they image and use that knowledge to guide users through ultrasound image acquisition and interpretation. At the same time, the secure cloud solution enables viewing, annotation, storage, and archiving of images and collaborative ultrasonography anywhere in the world.

Butterfly was founded by Jonathan Rothberg, PhD, and a group of physicists and engineers from MIT who aim to make ultrasound as accessible and useful as the stethoscope. According to Rothberg, the company has essentially upgraded the stethoscope for the 21st century. Rothberg noted that 2016 will mark the bicentennial of Rene Laënnec’s invention of the stethoscope, which he refers to as medicine’s iconic, personal diagnostic device. “We’re honoring Laënnec’s vision by creating a visual stethoscope that now enables all healthcare professionals to quickly and easily see into the body,” said Rothberg in the Butterfly Network announcement.

Butterfly reports that a professional jury chose the company as one of 49 selected companies to receive the Technology Pioneer award from among hundreds of candidates. Thanks to its selection, Butterfly says it will have access to an influential business and political network, and will be invited to the WEF’s “Summer Davos” in Dalian, China, this September, or the Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January.

“We’re glad to see an American company make it to the selection,” said Fulvia Montresor, head of technology pioneers at the WEF. “Butterfly is part of a group of entrepreneurs who are more aware of the crucial challenges of the world around them, and who are determined to do their part to solve those challenges with their company.”

For more information about the company and its technology, visit the Butterfly Network website.