GE Launches Industrial Internet and Cloud-Based Solutions at the Arab Health Congress 2014

By improving interconnectivity of various stakeholders in the healthcare delivery chain using industrial internet platforms, GE intends to lower costs and increase efficiency.

Participating for the first time, the technology giant GE Healthcare showcased its advanced medical imaging technologies, services and solutions at the Arab Health Exhibition and Congress 2014 held at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Apart from its latest Revolution Computed Tomography platforms with the industry best spatial and temporal resolution, it pushed its health IT and cloud computing systems to the Middle East audience.

Under the theme, ‘Advancing Healthcare Together,’ GE launched Centricity 360 clinical collaboration solution built on GE’s industrial internet platform called Predix, which so far is available only to select pilot customers in the United States.

“Healthcare expenditure in the GCC region has been increasing at an estimated 7.9 per cent per annum over the last ten years, and the total healthcare expenditure is expected to be $79.2 billion in 2015. The key drivers in healthcare expenditure growth are the increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases and population growth...”

Said Maher Abouzeid, president and CEO of GE Healthcare for the Middle East and Pakistan. He added:

“...With over 40 years of operations in the region, GE Healthcare is focused on bringing in new and advanced technologies to the region, underlining our capabilities and innovative approaches to help deliver customer-oriented solutions. These technologies enable caregivers to strengthen operational efficiency, enhance diagnostic competencies, and potentially reduce healthcare expenditure through timely treatment.”

Benefits of using centricity 360 within digital health

Centricity 360 is a cost-effective, secure and reliable cloud-computing platform that streamlines collaboration between clinicians and patients.

By enabling faster and simultaneous access and sharing of images, clinical reports and other data; it reduces clinical data distribution costs, decreases duplicate imaging, avoids unnecessary patient transfers and improves referral relationships at no capital costs.

Centricity 360 is built on Predix, GE’s software platform for the industrial internet. It can be deployed on stand-alone machines, on-premise or in the cloud.

Predix enables optimized operations to run industrial-scale distributed computing, big data analytics, asset management, mobility and machine-to-machine communication necessary in building a truly interconnected, large-scale health IT systems.

By integrating machines, advanced analytics and healthcare professionals, Centricity 360 based on Predix improves healthcare services delivery.

Now the clinicians can have quick access to patient data and images in real-time and exchange them with the care team without any duplication and this, in turn, helps the care team to make faster care decisions regardless of location.

Maher Abouzeid adds:

“Through GE Healthcare’s Industrial Internet mission, we aim to deliver outcome-based offerings and solutions for customers to enhance the productivity and efficiency of the hospital infrastructure. This is of great significance to the Middle East region, where healthcare costs are increasing, in line with the increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases and growth in population.

“By identifying, liberating and analyzing the data captured by software and technology, caregivers will have the information they need when they need it to help enable them to prevent, diagnose, treat and cure. This will also enable healthcare practitioners to further sharpen their diagnostic and treatment capabilities by benefiting from the most relevant data for accurate and faster care. While healthcare has always relied on big data, our focus is to use this information effectively by providing the right technology that enable physicians to make the right diagnosis and match it with the right treatment.”

GE, one of the leading sponsors of the Big Data Conference and other conferences held in the sidelines of the Arab Health Congress, intends to reduce hospital operating costs by improving connectivity between physicians, patients, machines and other stakeholders in the healthcare delivery chain by offering a host of Big Data services on its industrial internet platforms.

Using Industrial Internet-based health IT systems, GE Healthcare aims to work with healthcare organisations in three key areas:

• Asset optimisation
• Patient flow optimisation
• Workforce optimisation.

These solutions lower operating costs, boost efficiency and make sure that the right staff member is assigned to the right patient at the right time.

Having the ability to manage the deployment of assets throughout their lifecycle, track patients and workflow right from admission to discharge in real-time and enabling better understanding of staffing and scheduling.

"Health care productivity is more important than ever for hospitals as more patients enter the system and operational costs continue to climb," said John Dineen, President and CEO, GE Healthcare. "In addition to clinical systems, hospitals need operational management systems to drive enterprise-wide efficiencies, reduce unnecessary costs and enable improved patient care. Over the next 5-7 years, we believe sales of these systems will accelerate towards double-digit growth and GE Healthcare will lead the way."