GE To Partner With Medical Institutions, Spend $200M Over Five Years To Develop Electronic Systems For Medical Information, Patient Records

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Also Included In: Public Health;  Primary Care / General Practice
Article Date: 20 Nov 2008 - 6:00 PST

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General Electric and GE Healthcare officials on Tuesday at a conference in New York City announced plans to partner with several U.S. medical institutions on an effort to develop a national electronic health record system, the AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. As part of the five-year, $200 million effort, GE will partner with the Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare, the Montefiore Medical Center and the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center.

The effort seeks to establish a system that will allow health care providers to share patient medical records electronically to improve efficiency and quality of care and reduce costs. In addition, the effort later seeks to develop systems that will allow providers to make more informed medical decisions based on best practices and extensive patient histories.

John Dineen, president and CEO of GE Healthcare, also said that health care information technology will help with efforts to increase health care access and reduce costs. "This is going to be the point of the spear for that attack," Dineen said.

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt added that he expects investment in health care IT to increase despite the current economic downturn. "At the end of the day, governments are going to spend money on things that drive productivity," Immelt said, adding, "Strategically, it's a great place long term" (AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11/19).

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