GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) a leading vendor of clinical, financial and administrative information technology solutions, showcased the company's innovative health information technology (HIT) solutions to members of the National Governors Association's (NGA) State Alliance for e-Health.

The State Alliance for e-Health is an initiative designed to improve the nation's health care system through the formation of a collaborative body of governors, state legislators and other state leaders that enables states to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the HIT initiatives they develop. GE Healthcare's Integrated IT Solutions business was recently selected by Vermont Information Technology Leaders (VITL) to provide the health information technology infrastructure for a statewide health information organization (RHIO).

During the morning session, GE experts demonstrated three practical approaches to HIT for Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, and members of the State Alliance for e-Health.

- Patient Privacy and Security: how to implement the 4 A's (Authentication, Access, Authorization, Audit) using IHE profiles, and the need to harmonize state-to-state policies. - Provider reporting tools: how GE enables providers to report on their quality of care against clinical guidelines and measures. GE shared its experience setting up quality outcomes reporting solutions. - Hosting Center Tour: GE showcased the company's development of a state-of-the-art hosting center for the GE eCommerce clearinghouse. This clearinghouse processes more than 10 million claim transactions per month and was developed to provide superior integration of the HIPAA administrative transactions into the workflow of GE applications.

"The State Alliance for e-Health has brought together policy makers from across the nation to address health IT issues and challenges to enabling appropriate, interoperable, electronic health information exchange," said Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, co-chair of the Alliance. "I am so pleased that we were able to bring the Alliance to Vermont to discuss the importance of electronic health records and state and national trends surrounding this critical issue. The GE site visit, in particular, was a unique opportunity to highlight and learn from a premier company in Vermont that is leading the nation in electronic health technology."

GE Healthcare's Integrated IT Solutions business provides comprehensive clinical & financial information technology solutions including enterprise and departmental Information Technology products, RIS/PACS and CVIS systems, revenue cycle management and practice applications, to help customers streamline healthcare costs and improve the quality of care.

"Harnessing health information will lead to the next great transformation in healthcare. It will empower both providers and patients to collaborate, improving outcomes and quality of life," said Vishal Wanchoo, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions. "As a leading proponent of standards-based interoperability we believe in creating health information exchanges that are inclusive, secure, affordable, and self-sustaining. GE Healthcare is very pleased to work with the NGA State Alliance for e-Health to help develop real-world solutions and model practices for improving the quality and efficiency of health care."

About National Governors Association State Alliance for e-Health

The State Alliance for e-Health is composed of elected and appointed officials including governors, state legislators, attorneys general, and insurance commissioners. In the initial year, the State Alliance met quarterly to address state-level health IT issues including barriers to interoperability, privacy and security issues, and state law and regulatory barriers to health IT related to the practice of medicine. The State Alliance is supported by a non-voting advisory committee and three taskforces. Each taskforce includes key stakeholders at the state-level who can provide expertise and experience in addressing state-level health IT issues and present recommendations to the State Alliance. The taskforces include the Health Information Protection Taskforce, the Health Care Practice Taskforce, and the Health Information Communication and Data Exchange Taskforce

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. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at http://www.gehealthcare.com.