At the Web 2.0 Summit  General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt  gave the first public viewing of GE’s new pocket-size Vscan  “ultra-smart ultrasound.”

About the size of a smart phone, theVscan houses powerful ultrasound technology that can potentially redefine the way doctors examine patients. By giving doctors a view into the body from the palm of a hand, GE says Vscan could one day become “as indispensable as the traditional physician’s stethoscope in patient exams.”

The company’s website says GE’s drive is to miniaturize technologies in order to make them more mobile, and GE has committed to developing 100 new innovations as part of its new $6 billion “healthymagination“  committment to developing 100 new medical innovations.

It certainly feels like we are entering a serious renaissance in the portability of medical instrumentation. In just the past year, I’ve met with numerous companies whose sole purpose is to use technology to do in the field what once could only be done in the laboratory. From infectious-disease detection to blood-flow monitoring, the cost-reduced portability of such devices could not come at a better time as our debate continues to rage around how to get our arms around skyrocketing medical expenses.