GE Healthcare Panda And Giraffe Infant Warmers Win Medical Design Excellence Award

Main Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Also Included In: Medical Devices
Article Date: 16 Jun 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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Healthcare received a 2008 Medical Design Excellence Award for the new Panda iRes Warmer for labor and delivery and the new Giraffe Warmer for neonatal intensive care. The most recognizable feature of the new Panda and Giraffe Warmers from GE is the innovative recessed heater that completely eliminates the traditional, often awkward, overhead design. The sleek, modern design improves clinician and parent access to the infant, removing overhead obstacles while providing uniform heat across the entire mattress.

The new warmers also feature an optional integrated resuscitation system that was designed with the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) latest Neonatal Resuscitation Program Guidelines (NRP) in mind. The resuscitation system requires minimal setup time and can help standardize resuscitation protocols across the perinatal care area. The Hands Free Alarm silence allows a clinician to silence alarms with a wave of their hand; clinicians can stay gloved during procedures and no longer need to call for help just to silence an alarm.

"At GE Healthcare, we are continuing to create leading technologies and innovations that directly support care giving," said Mike Genau, Vice President and General Manager of GE Healthcare's Maternal - Infant Care business. "We are proud to receive the 2008 Medical Design Excellence Award because it shows how committed we are to helping hospitals care for the most fragile patients by designing award winning products that meet the unique needs in the Labor and Delivery and NICU."

The Medical Design Excellence Awards competition is organized and presented by Canon Communications LLC (Los Angeles) and is the only awards program that exclusively recognizes contributions and advances in the design of medical products. Entries are evaluated on the basis of their design and engineering features including innovative use of materials, user-related functions that improve healthcare delivery and change traditional medical attitudes or practices, features that provide enhanced benefits to the patient and the ability of the product development team to overcome design and engineering challenges so that the product meets its clinical objectives. A comprehensive review of the entries was performed by an impartial, multidisciplinary panel of third-party jurors with expertise in biomedical engineering, human factors, industrial design, medicine, and diagnostics.

The 2008 Medical Design Excellence Award winners were honored at a ceremony during the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) East Conference and Exposition, earlier this month at New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. 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.

GE Healthcare