Health 2.0

GE Healthcare took another step forward in its role as one of the global leaders in enabling cost-effective, appropriate imaging, announcing a partnership with a leading provider of Clinical Decision Support for Diagnostic Imaging (CDS-DI), Medicalis, that seeks to help drive quality healthcare and reduce unnecessary imaging procedures and costs. The alignment, which will integrate Medicalis’ CDS-DI solution with GE’s Centricity™ Imaging IT and Electronic Medical Records (EMR) products, will seek to deliver decision support at the physician office’s point of order (EMR) or the radiology provider’s point of service (Imaging IT).

CDS-DI uses industry best practice knowledge designed to help physicians enhance the quality of patient care by ordering the right imaging study the first time. Medicalis’ decision support module is based on the clinical guidelines of the American College of Radiology, American College of Cardiology, American College of Physicians, and the American Society of Spine Radiologists with relevant in-context advice as a provider first places the imaging study order. Patients may benefit by avoiding unhelpful imaging studies, thereby reducing unnecessary radiation exposure and out-of-pocket healthcare expense.

GE Healthcare’s rich history and extensive expertise in diagnostic imaging positions the company as a responsible physician-partner to help clinicians order the right test first. The initiative fits perfectly within GE’s healthymagination campaign, which is built on the global commitments of reducing costs, improving quality and expanding access for millions of people.

“GE is proud to serve as a dedicated partner to government, employee health benefits providers and other stakeholders in lowering rising costs to the healthcare system, while helping to ensure that appropriate patient and provider access to the most effective resources for quality care are maintained,” said Mark Vachon, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Americas. “GE’s new alignment with Medicalis leaves healthcare decisions in the hands of clinicians but adds an additional layer of transparency and accountability for each ordered imaging request. This extra support, we believe, will result in more use of evidence and a reduction of unnecessary imaging tests which, in turn, could fuel lower-cost, higher-quality healthcare.”

“This agreement with GE Healthcare is an important step to providing the best evidence to physicians about the efficacy of imaging across North America” says Ron Kelly, President & CEO of Medicalis. “Better information at the time of decision making leads to more consistent care delivery and significantly reduces the variance of how patients are diagnosed, leading to greater physician confidence, reduced costs, and improved patient outcomes.”

GE Centricity® Imaging Solutions are designed to assist clinicians by accelerating workflow efficiency for clinical applications, innovating enterprise-wide image analysis and facilitating the seamless capture, storage and retrieval of total patient data.

GE’s Centricity® EMR systems are used by more than 33,000 physicians and 900 hospitals and clinics, enabling ambulatory care physicians and clinical staff to document patient encounters, streamline clinical workflow and securely exchange clinical data with other providers, patients, and information systems.

“Better IT strategies are needed for providers to address the variances that currently exist in healthcare as a fundamental driver of costs and quality issues. For Imaging IT, specifically, clinical decision support is integral to the workflow process to provide the best advice at the finger-tips of physicians and improve reimbursement,” said Don Woodlock, Vice President and Global General Manager of GE Healthcare IT. “This partnership with Medicalis enables GE to address this need and further automate radiology workflow. Healthymagination is about reducing costs while increasing quality. Delivering knowledge to the point of care helps with both simultaneously.”

ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE:

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our "healthymagination" vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.

ABOUT MEDICALIS CORPORATION:

Medicalis is a leading provider of healthcare information technology and Clinical Decision Support with Report Outcomes for diagnostic imaging. Medicalis delivers web-based clinical and integration services to physicians, providers and health plans to provide advanced diagnostic imaging solutions that improve quality and efficiency of diagnostic services. Medicalis delivers solutions that provide clinical guidelines for use at the point-of-care, point-of-service and point-of-analysis that address the issues of unnecessary testing, resource utilization and patient safety. For more information visit www.medicalis.com.