Healthcare Technology Featured Article

May 08, 2009

Healthcare Technology and News: GE to Spend $3 Billion Over Six Years on Healthcare Technologies


Call them the “anti-newspaper” industries: Healthcare institutions – like educational organizations – typically are ahead of the curve in adopting new technologies to deliver new services and work more efficiently.
 
It’s what motivated this week’s announced acquisition by Degama Software Solutions of IgeaCare – whose igeacom product integrates traditional nurse call systems into a single converged telephony-based solution – and it’s why we can have discussions about the myths of voice automation in healthcare or the way Web-based technologies both help and hinder efforts to control swine flu.
 
Now, as economic stimulus funding accelerates electronic medical records projects across healthcare, we’re expecting to hear more and more from large market players eyeing ways cash in on sweeping government-backed industry reforms.
 
This week, one of those major players – GE – said it’s spending more than $3 billion over the next six years to “help deliver better care to more people at lower cost.”
 
Specifically, the company says it’s committing $2 billion of financing and $1 billion in related technology and content to drive healthcare information technology and health in rural and underserved areas.
 
The company calls its project the “healthymagination” initiative. (Catchy – recall the company’s environmental effort, “ecomagination,” which was launched several years ago).
 
Echoing last fall’s presidential candidates on the campaign trail, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said healthcare “needs new solutions.”
 
“We must innovate with smarter processes and technologies that help doctors and hospitals deliver better healthcare to more people at a lower cost,” Immelt said. “Healthymagination is our business strategy that seeks to help people live healthier lives, support customer success and help GE grow. We will invest in innovations that measurably improve cost, access and quality. That means lower-cost technology for more customers, products matched to specific local needs and process expertise to help customers win.”
 
The company provides some broad strokes. By 2015 GE expects to:
 
  • Invest $3 billion in research and development to launch at least 100 innovations that lower cost, increase access and improve quality by 15 percent. GE will also apply its expertise in services and its suite of performance improvement tools for impact in these areas. These actions will strengthen GE Healthcare’s business model.
  • Work with partners to focus innovations on four critical needs to start: accelerating healthcare information technology; target high-tech products to more affordable price points; broaden access to the underserved; and support consumer-driven health.
  • Expand its employee health efforts by creating new wellness and healthy worksite programs while keeping cost increases below the rate of inflation.
  • Increase the “value gap” between its health spend and GE Healthcare’s earnings to drive new value for GE shareholders.
  • Engage and report on its progress. GE will engage experts and leaders on policy and programs and create a GE Health Advisory Board, which will include former U.S. senators Bill Frist and Tom Daschle and other global healthcare leaders.
 
Daschle said businesses and government must collaborate to deliver effective solutions.
 
“The commitments GE made today on access, cost, and quality are a great start toward demonstrating their leadership in this debate,” he said. “I look forward to working with them.”
 
Specifically, GE says it will reduce the cost of procedures and processes with GE technologies and services by 15 percent. It also will increase by 15 percent people’s access to services and technologies essential for health, reaching 100 million more people every year, and improve quality and efficiency by 15 percent for customers through simplifying and refining health care procedures and standards of care.
 
“In addition to the $3 billion spend by GE Healthcare, GE Capital will provide $2 billion in financing for advancing healthcare IT and several GE businesses will spend $1 billion over the next five years for partnerships, media content and services related to healthymagination,” company officials say.
 

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Michael Dinan is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Michael's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Michael Dinan
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