ViewPoint was founded in 1991 by three engineers in Germany and was acquired by GE HealthCare in April 2002.
The company initially operated out of a garage under the ViewPoint office, where the team developed ultrasound workstations, servers and software to capture 3D ultrasound images. After hearing from a clinical partner that reporting was a particular challenge, they pivoted to focus on improving the reporting process. It's this clinical collaboration that has fueled ViewPoint’s rise as the premier ultrasound reporting solution.
“ViewPoint has always been driven by our customers, the doctors. Back then, we were very agile. We sat down, programmed it, and sometimes hours later we had it,” said Bernhard Hornung, the first employee hired by company founders in 1991.
Bernhard remembers the four-person team was slated to demonstrate ViewPoint for a potential new customer, but the product wasn’t quite ready. “We programmed all through the night to get the functionality. Just half an hour before the demonstration, it was ready to go,” he said.
Franz Stoelzle joined the team in 1994 as a clinical applications developer and Martin Haunschild joined in 1996 as a software developer. Today, Bernhard, Franz and Martin have a combined 88 years of ViewPoint expertise and are considered to be GEHC’s resident ViewPoint historians.
They say that being acquired by GE HealthCare was a leap forward for the company, bringing the power of a Global sales team previously inaccessible to them. At the time of acquisition, there were only 215 ViewPoint installations and 2,195 users in six countries. Today, there are more than 6,200 installations and more than 52,000 users in 90 countries.
“The acquisition by GEHC opened more markets to us, so that was a very amazing transition,” Martin said.
Twenty years later, they’re still dedicated to bringing more value to the entire ultrasound experience, from reporting through mining data for valuable insights. They’re also ushering in ViewPoint as a part of Ultrasound Digital Solutions. “Combining these solutions into a product portfolio will help customers solve their problems to become faster and more efficient,” said Franz.
Despite their many years with ViewPoint, Bernhard, Franz and Martin continue to have a passion for pushing the product forward.
“There’s never been a year in the last 20 years with GEHC that we haven't had a new challenge, so I’ve never felt bored,” said Franz.
“We know what's required and we are working on translating this into making the product even better,” added Martin.
To commemorate ViewPoint’s 20th anniversary, we’re rolling out a year-long campaign that highlights key moments in our history and sets the stage for the next evolution – because the best is yet to come.
