Fresh out of the 130-year-old nest, GE HealthCare is ready to move fast and break things.<\/p>\n
The standalone company made its public trading debut with a bang\u2014or, rather, a ding\u2014after virtually ringing the Nasdaq opening bell from its Waukesha, Wisconsin, manufacturing facility Wednesday. It\u2019s now listed under the ticker symbol \u201cGEHC\u201d and spent its first day on the market climbing about 8% over its $54.30 starting share price.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Fierce Medtech after the ceremony, Catherine Estrampes, the president and CEO of GE HealthCare\u2019s U.S. and Canada division, described the spinout as \u201ca catalyst moment for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really about bringing the best of our GE heritage, while becoming an independent and more focused, more agile company,\u201d Estrampes said.<\/p>\n
That faster-moving, more purpose-driven culture, she continued, \u201cwill result in faster decision-making, greater integration into the healthcare ecosystem and a greater ability to take calculated risks that may not have been possible as part of a large industrial conglomerate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spinning out of its century-old parent company will also give GE HealthCare \u201cmore accountability and focus,\u201d Estrampes said. The company comprises segments that brought in around $18 million while under the GE umbrella, which will in turn allow the newborn entity to hit the ground running with its investment plans.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Those plans are split between a deep-seated commitment to R&D spending and what Estrampes described as \u201cvery disciplined M&A strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n When looking outward, GE HealthCare will focus in part on tuck-in acquisitions of technologies that fit in well with its existing products and markets, she told Fierce Medtech. In the longer term, the company may scope out larger mergers and acquisitions that introduce it to new, adjacent market segments\u2014particularly in \u201cimage-guided solutions, workflow efficiencies and therapeutics\u201d\u2014but, Estrampes added, \u201cA disciplined approach to M&A is the word.\u201d<\/p>\n R&D dollars, meanwhile, will be spread across GE HealthCare\u2019s four core segments: imaging, ultrasound, patient care solutions and pharmaceutical diagnostics. High-priority areas the exec singled out include photon-counting imaging technology that can churn out extremely detailed CT scans, as well as handheld and remote ultrasound devices and the Portrait Mobile wearable patient monitoring sensor, which is currently under FDA review.<\/p>\n On top of that, GE HealthCare is also devoting plenty of time and money to artificial intelligence, including \u201clots of AI-powered and AI-enabled devices to really address the issues that our clients have: the need for increased productivity, increased efficiency and making sure that they can execute on the backlog of the procedures they have,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Overall, according to Estrampes, GE HealthCare is going solo just in time to capitalize on the influx of opportunities currently available for medtech makers\u2014including opportunities to solve the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, an aging population, upticks in chronic disease rates, a growing middle class and healthcare worker burnout and shortages.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could not be starting this new journey at a better time,\u201d Estrampes said. \u201cThese are exciting times in the healthcare world.\u201d<\/p>\n GE first announced its intent to spin off the healthcare segment in late 2021, when it also laid out plans to eventually separate out its renewable energy, power and digital divisions into another standalone company; the second spinout isn\u2019t slated for completion until early next year. What\u2019s left of General Electric will become GE Aviation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the months since announcing the impending creation of GE HealthCare, its parent company tapped Peter Arduini\u2014already the head of the healthcare division since early 2022\u2014to serve as CEO. It also unveiled new a new name and logo for the spinoff, complete with a brand-new bicapitalization and a coat of \u201ccompassion purple\u201d paint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fresh out of the 130-year-old nest, GE HealthCare is ready to move fast and break things. The standalone company made its public trading debut with a bang\u2014or, rather, a ding\u2014after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[73,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/7C447A07-BD56-481D-AA13-09E5AF9FB01E.jpeg?fit=712%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3449,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447\/revisions\/3449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}