STORY / PUBLIC SOURCE RECORD
From startup to global brand: a medical ultrasound success
- Published 3 March 2023; updated 21 September 2026; estimated reading time 5 minutes. The article follows Anders Wold’s career from a Horten medical-device startup in 1984 to CEO of GE Healthcare’s global ultrasound division. It says the ultrasound field releases products rapidly and requires internationally connected innovation teams. Wold emphasises collaboration with clinicians, customers and solution providers and attention to the full patient pathway.
- Vingmed Sound was established in 1986 to build on marine-electronics company Vingtor and add medical technology. It partnered with NTNU researchers Bjørn Angelsen and Liv Hatle, commercialising a Doppler device that measured blood-flow velocity in the heart. Wold’s background as a cross-country skier and coach, including work on measuring skier speed, helped spark his interest in ultrasound flow measurement.
- Vingmed built brand awareness by selling Doppler technology to larger firms including Philips, Toshiba and Advanced Technology Labs, which marketed devices under the Vingmed name. The page recounts successive acquisitions—Interspec (1988), Diasonics (1990) and Elbit Medical (1994)—before GE Healthcare acquired the business in 1998.
- Under Wold’s leadership as global ultrasound CEO from 2008, GE launched the Vscan in 2009, described as the first colour pocket-sized ultrasound scanner, and the wireless Vscan Air in 2021, which displays real-time ultrasound images on smartphones. The article says Kjell Kristoffersen was the Vscan technology architect and long-serving GE Healthcare chief ultrasound engineer. Wold cites access, quality and affordability as important challenges; the page quotes a figure of five billion people lacking hospital access.
- The article claims Wold grew the ultrasound business from USD 75 million in 1998 to USD 2 billion in 2019, and describes GE as a market leader; these are historical figures attributed to the article. Written by Leah Anderson on behalf of EXACT-Therapeutics, Innovation Norway, Norway Health Tech, Investinor and NTNU’s Centre for Innovative Ultrasound Solutions, as part of “The global reach of Norwegian ultrasound innovation.” Contact for story submissions: Masha Strømme, Masha@exact-tx.com. Series links cover Liv Hatle, Bjørn Angelsen, Vingmed commercialisation, William Castell, microbubbles and drug delivery. Related industry: Health and life science.