The Global Ultrasound Institute (GUSI) has launched its new Sage AI tool, which can answer open-ended ultrasound questions on demand and in 80 languages. It was trained using knowledge from the world's leading community of expert POCUS educators.

"The biggest barrier to real true adoption [of POCUS] is for healthcare practitioners to actually feel confident [when performing exams]," Dr. Kevin Bergman, co-CEO of GUSI, told HCB News. "Many of them did not receive this training in their medical training if they are a nurse midwife, physician, physician assistant or nurse practitioner."

GUSI has offered ultrasound mentorship in person and virtually, but the challenge is that someone isn't always available to answer questions. This new tool solves that because answers are available 24/7 from any location on the GUSI website.

Sage AI has access to GUSI's proprietary library of educational assets, which includes thousands of hours of course material, videos, images, teaching sessions, and more. The answers are fully-referenced and come with ultrasound images and video clips from GUSI's pathology library.

The institute has also incorporated a curated list of sources including the World Health Organization, Partners in Health, and PubMed National Library of Medicine to ensure the responses are comprehensive and impartial.

"It's a lot of sources and we've gone through every single one of them to make sure they are legitimate, evidence-based medical information," said Bergman.

From 2011 to 2021, the growth in ultrasound exams has significantly outpaced the growth in sonographers, according to a study published in the Journal of Ultrasound Medicine in July. Bergman believes that tools like Sage AI can help alleviate this burden.

"There's always going to be a need for sonographers, but [a tool like this] can make it so the people who do get sent to the sonographers are those that truly need it," he said. "This can empower more clinicians to grab a probe and do the exam themselves because they have more support, more answers, and more confidence."

Sage AI is part of a range of tools that GUSI offers on its scanHub training platform. It is available for free for all registered users on the GUSI website.

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