Thursday, October 1, 2026
When Ryan James last spoke with Ward Media in 2024 about Dopl Technologies, the company was still testing an ambitious idea: bringing high-quality ultrasound services to rural communities by rethinking how—and where—scans are performed.
At the time, Dopl had only a handful of hospital partners and an early prototype. Today, the company has scanned many patients, reduced wait times at partner hospitals, and is preparing for a regulatory milestone that could unlock national—and eventually global—scale.
“We’ve scanned nearly 2,000 patients since we started,” James said. “We decreased wait times by over 90 percent, and that’s had a significant impact on the communities we’re serving.”
Dopl’s early work focused less on robotics and more on solving an immediate workforce shortage.
In its early days, the company piloted a program it called “boots on the ground,” sending traveling sonographers to rural hospitals that struggled to recruit or retain imaging staff. That effort has since evolved into Care Bridge, a structured service model that remains central to operations.
“Back then, we had just started what we used to call boots on the ground, what we currently call Care Bridge,” James said. “We hire sonographers and we pay for them to travel to rural hospitals and perform in-person scans.”
Those first hospital partnerships—launched between 2023 and 2024—served as a proving ground. Beyond filling staffing gaps, they gave Dopl a detailed understanding of how ultrasound services function in rural settings.
“We’ve learned there’s a lot of intricacies and nuances in setting up ultrasound services that are shared between in-person and tele-robotic,” James said. “There’s workflow, integrating different technologies, establishing billing and scheduling, building the workforce—all that kind of stuff is common between them.”
That operational insight is now shaping the company’s transition toward remote care.
While Care Bridge addresses immediate needs, Dopl’s long-term focus is tele-robotic ultrasound—systems that allow sonographers to remotely control robotic arms performing scans miles away.
The company has already begun testing that concept through IRB-approved studies. Those trials have produced not only technical feedback, but also insight into patient experience.
“In one of our studies, 57 percent of patients preferred tele-robotic ultrasound over manual ultrasound,” James said. “We’ve learned a lot about patient preferences, sonographer user experience, and implications within hospitals and for sonographers.”
The technology also addresses a persistent issue within the field: injury.
“Sonographers are often reaching over patients to scan them, or pressing all day to get a good image,” he said. “Now a robot can do the reaching and the pressure management. We have this incredible opportunity to create a really nice ergonomic environment for sonographers.”
According to James, roughly 90 percent of sonographers experience work-related injuries during their careers, often due to repetitive motion and physical strain. Tele-robotic systems could reduce that burden while expanding access to care.
Dopl’s technical evolution has been rapid.
“Back then, it was just me, and I was developing really rapidly,” James said.
A key turning point came with investment from Flywheel Capital, which helped the company advance its prototype and support clinical studies.
“One of the things that the Flywheel capital helped us do was take our prototype to the next level,” he said. “We significantly enhanced our prototype between 2024 and 2025, and that enabled us to scan a bunch of patients under a series of studies.”
Feedback from those studies—along with input from hospital partners—helped refine both the technology and the user experience. Internally, the system has progressed from what James described as a “duct taped together platform” to one approaching production readiness.
“We’ve been able to evolve from sort of a duct taped together platform to a platform that’s production quality and just about ready to ship,” he said.
Dopl has also begun using data from its scans to develop AI tools aimed at improving workflow and supporting sonographers.
“We’ve been able to collect a lot of data, and we’re using that to build AI that will enhance the sonographer’s experience,” he said.
Despite the progress, financing has been one of the company’s biggest hurdles.
“We’re solving a really tough problem,” James said. “I would say the biggest barrier for us has been financial—just raising enough capital to actually accomplish what we need to accomplish.”
Dopl closed a $1.73 million pre-seed round at the end of 2024, allowing it to expand its team and continue development. It is now raising what James describes as a “substantial” seed round.
“We’ve learned a lot from the hospitals and our users. We know what we need to build,” he said. “It’s just taken a bit longer to raise the amount of money that we need to get our product into market, which has delayed us significantly. Fortunately, that barrier is just about removed.”
The next major milestone is regulatory approval.
Dopl is targeting submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the end of 2026, with anticipated clearance in early 2027.
“We are submitting for FDA clearance at the end of this year,” James said. “We’ll have clearance in Q1 of 2027 and then we’ll launch our tele-robotic services in 2027, transitioning our customers from in-person services to tele-robotic ultrasound exams.”
That shift would allow Dopl to move from periodic, in-person visits to a continuous, remote model with broader availability.
“Another [barrier] is regulatory, just making sure we build the right package to submit to the FDA,” James said. “That’s something we spend a lot of time on.”
At the same time, the company is evaluating how to scale once approval is secured.
“Our goal is to be national, global,” he said. “Rolling out strategically is something that we’re going to have to be very careful about.”
Partnerships have been central to Dopl’s growth.
James credits Flywheel Capital’s network—including physicians and hospital leaders—with helping the company better understand rural healthcare and build credibility.
“Our due diligence team at Flywheel consisted of physicians and hospital leaders,” he said. “They’ve been tremendous in helping us understand the market and connecting us with other people, as well as giving us the validation that we’ve needed.”
Another key relationship has been with HeartX, which connects startups with clinical partners. Through that network, Dopl has secured pilot sites across multiple states, including Washington, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
Demand, however, is not the limiting factor.
“Honestly, we have more people who want this than we can serve,” James said. “Our problem is not finding people who want it. Our problem is getting to market fast enough to give them what they need.”
Dopl’s path forward is both ambitious and measured.
In the near term, the company plans to expand nationally following FDA clearance. Over the next five years, James envisions international growth and a broader range of services built on the same platform.
“Right now we’re doing non-invasive ultrasound,” he said. “Fundamentally, we’re a platform that enables all types of exams and procedures. Within five years, I want to ensure we’re doing another type of care delivery, whether it’s a biopsy or a minimally invasive heart or vascular procedure—something additional where we’re getting closer to our vision.”
For now, the groundwork is still being laid.
Dopl’s Care Bridge sonographers have logged more than 60,000 miles traveling to rural hospitals, performing scans for nearly 2,000 patients and building the operational knowledge that underpins the company’s next phase.
If successful, those miles may eventually be replaced by a network of robotic systems connecting rural hospitals to specialists anywhere in the world—making geography far less of a barrier to timely, high-quality care.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here