Innovations like AI-informed cancer therapeutics, at-home heart monitors and one-stop clinics that provide same-day results are paving a roadmap to the future of medicine, which will be anchored by precision care.
“Precision care is the future of healthcare, but it is still a young discipline, and GE HealthCare is dedicated to driving its future,” says GE HealthCare CEO Peter Arduini. “When clinicians have the data they need at their fingertips to make more informed and targeted treatment decisions, they can plan more effective interventions that help improve patient outcomes.”
Modern precision care comprises many moving parts that require a strong foundation based on innovation and collaboration, says Arduini. These elements include clinician knowledge of individual patients, genomics, data analytics and the ability to translate it all into connected, personalized care that reaches the patient across many settings. “But it all rests on one foundation: the ability to capture precise images, analyze high-volume patient data and drive insights across a broad platform. GE HealthCare is that foundation,” he says.
From its origins inventing the first viable human X-ray in 1896 to its NASA-style clinical command centers today, GE HealthCare has more than 100 years of experience delivering high-impact innovations to help clinicians quickly and confidently provide the right diagnosis and treatment. The key element propelling GE HealthCare forward in today’s healthcare transformation is its dedication to personalized care and precision innovation. In 2021 alone, GE HealthCare invested approximately $1 billion in research and development, and it has committed to future R&D growth to accelerate its innovation pipeline.Now, as a standalone company, GE HealthCare will have greater focus on its purpose and more flexibility to deliver precision care and invest in growth, says Arduini. GE HealthCare’s strategy is grounded in driving industry-leading precision innovation; accelerating growth through product leadership and commercial execution; and optimizing its operating model through a simplified, decentralized structure.
Technology-driven innovation has the potential to improve every dimension of personalized patient-centric healthcare and create up to $410 billion in annual value by 2025, according to a 2019 McKinsey study. The study posits that realizing this value will require disruptors to take stock of the technologies available today, develop clear ways to demonstrate how these innovations create value and implement these technologies smoothly.
Maintaining health
One of the greatest potential benefits of precision care is keeping people healthy to minimize doctor’s visits. The proliferation of consumer wearables and other medical devices, combined with AI, is being leveraged to oversee early-stage heart disease and other chronic conditions. This shift from “sick care” to “well care”enables providers and clinicians to better monitor and detect potentially life-threatening conditions at earlier, more treatable stages.
One example of the hospital-to-home shift is a medical-grade six-lead wireless electrocardiogram (ECG) device, AliveCor’s KardiaMobile 6L, which helps patients measure their heart rhythm between appointments and feeds data into GE HealthCare’s cardiac management system, MUSE, used in 84% of cardiac hospitals in the US. As prescribed by their clinician, patients can take their own ECG at home or on the go with the KardiaMobile 6L device, which can detect atrial fibrillation (AFib) and other heart rhythm conditions. The output can seamlessly integrate with MUSE, allowing clinicians to analyze and act upon patient data within their existing workflow.
For the 37.5 million people worldwide diagnosed with AFib, which increases the risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications, this home and on-the-go solution represents how innovation can empower patients to take a leading role in monitoring and addressing their health issues, contributing to fewer trips to the hospital.
Better patient experiences and outcomes
Mammograms are still the gold standard in breast cancer screening; however, the procedure involves compressing the breast between two clear plates, which can cause discomfort and pain for some women. Studies show that 25% of womenskip their annual mammograms due to discomfort, anxiety and pain, deterring them from getting potentially lifesaving screenings.
GE HealthCare’s industry-first patient-assisted mammogram experience, the Senographe Pristina with Dueta™, aims to remove this deterrent to screening by allowing patients, with the help of a technologist, to set the compression that feels right for them. By improving patient comfort, technologists can focus on precise positioning, making the diagnostic process easier and faster.
AI is already being used to help detect diseases more accurately and in earlier stages, but it is also playing a role in patient experience. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is similarly a procedure where the experience can be a deterrent for up to 20% of patients; a 2019 study found that as many as 37% of patients reported experiencing an anxiety attack during an MRI. This is where AI-powered MRIs embedded with applications like AIR™ Recon DL can improve patient experiences and outcomes. Used in the diagnosis of more than 5.5 million patients worldwide, the technology improves the signal-to-noise ratio of scans without compromising image quality. The result is a sharper, clearer image and the potential for up to a 50% reduction in scan time.
Access through innovation
“One of the truly exciting trends in ultrasound that we’re starting to see is a move from it being something that only experts could operate to something that can sit in the pocket of any clinician anywhere in the world at a really accessible price point,” says Karley Yoder, GM and Chief Digital Officer, Ultrasound at GE HealthCare.
The company estimates that the market for handheld ultrasounds will grow to as much as $1 billion in the next decade. As a pioneer in handheld ultrasound devices, the company aims to capture 30% of the market with its pocket-sized wireless ultrasound device, the Vscan Air™, by 2025. To date, more than 30,000 units in the Vscan line have supported the care of more than 50 million patients worldwide.
Layering technologies to address new patient needs is another example of patient-centric innovation. “This is the kind of thing we’re doing across the board to make healthcare more accessible at a global scale,” says Yoder. “The Vscan family of handheld ultrasounds is an incredible proof point of that journey. We’re leveraging the best of AI, cloud technologies and more. Imagine starting with the low-cost handheld, and then layering telemedicine onto it. Smart apps that could allow providers with a variety of backgrounds to operate a device, collect high-quality images and share them with a clinician anywhere in the world who can then give clinical insights. Suddenly, you can provide care that wasn’t accessible before.”
Harnessing the power of medical data analytics
A third of the world’s data volume is being generated by the healthcare industry. Between 2018 and 2025, the compound annual growth rate of healthcare data is projected to reach 36%—higher than the growth of manufacturing data (30%), financial services data (26%) or media and entertainment data (25%). Improving patient care depends on how clinicians access and use this data to make appropriate and timely decisions.
Additionally, new data from the Mayo Clinic suggests that a recent spike in emotional exhaustion and clinician burnout affected 62.8% of medical practitioners in 2021. AI-powered data analytics help healthcare providers apply cognitive technology like machine learning and pattern recognition to identify at-risk patients faster, create operational efficiencies and reduce clinician burnout.
GE HealthCare’s Mural Virtual Care Solution, coupled with real-time patient data dashboards that keep care teams up to date on the status of critically ill patients, makes tele-ICU a reality. Tele-ICU programs have control centers staffed with critical care practitioners who can digitally deliver real-time patient information to frontline clinicians. As a result, patients receive more consistent, proactive and timely care, and hospitals are better equipped to deliver improved patient outcomes. “Over the last two years—if you can find a silver lining from Covid—there was an incredible amount of investment into telemedicine and virtual care offerings,” says Yoder.
“If GE HealthCare can work together with these types of innovators and deliver solutions to providers in 160 countries, we can be the integrator that brings these solutions to life through strategic collaborations, with the best of technology and the best of startup innovation,” she says.
Emerging treatments
Looking ahead to the future of precision care, the company has set its sights on how leveraging smart devices, disease state care pathways and its digital platform can improve diagnosis and treatment options.
One example is the emerging field of theranostics, which integrates diagnostics and therapies, helping to provide personalized treatments for improved patient outcomes in oncology. Clinicians, engineers and data experts are working together to develop more precise images of cancer pathology. By combining these diagnostic PET and SPECT images with patient data, such as patient history, blood test results and genomic data, theranostics helps clinicians better understand the characteristics of a particular tumor and predict which treatments may be most successful. Furthermore, it enables more accurate and personal quantification of each patient’s response to treatment, helping to reveal helpful details regarding his or her index for disease progress.
“A huge growth in the field will be driven by the therapy part of theranostics, and that’s where big pharma players are coming into play,” says Dr. Andrei Iagaru, professor of radiology at Stanford Medicine. “This stimulates equipment manufacturers to invest more in research and development. They also have lines in their business that deal with radiopharmaceuticals, so it’s a good feedback circle where success in one area drives success in the next. This attracts young, brilliant people to the field, so I really don’t think that there’s a better time to be in theranostics than now.”
Despite decades of development, theranostics is still in its infancy. The first treatments for neuroendocrine tumors and prostate cancer that recently became available are the start to a race in innovation. Iagaru likens the current radiopharmaceutical industry to the tech startup environment in Silicon Valley.
“There’s just so much excitement, funding and target development, looking beyond one cancer,” he says. “People are looking at pan-cancer probes, different forms of radiation—some more powerful than others, yet manageable in a clinical scenario. So, stay tuned; we are just opening the door here.”
The investment proposition and innovation roadmap
With a strong worldwide track record and more than 4 million base equipment units installed, Arduini has many reasons to believe that GE HealthCare has a clear path to value creation and accelerating top- and bottom-line growth.
“First, we are a global leader in highly attractive, growing healthcare markets. Second, we are improving lives through precision care—a strategy that GE HealthCare is uniquely able to execute, given our extensive scale and capabilities. Third, through the spin-off, we are transforming our operating model to become a more focused, agile company that is better able to anticipate the needs of our stakeholders and bring new, innovative solutions to market,” he explains.“We believe we are uniquely positioned to win in precision care, building on the strong foundation we have as a leader in our industry and our global scale and reach.”
