GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric Company, and global eHealth specialist InterComponentWare (ICW) have announced that the companies have signed a strategic agreement to integrate and co-develop their health information exchange (HIE) solutions.
Through this relationship, GE Healthcare and ICW will leverage their existing solutions and co-develop new offerings for the health information exchange and global eHealth marketplace. Using ICW’s expertise in eHealth and patient connectivity, GE Healthcare will enhance its Centricity® Health Information Exchange service’s existing technology, patient connectivity and communications tools while further bolstering their security and interoperability capabilities.
“Connectivity is one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today and it directly impacts the quality and cost of patient care,” said Vishal Wanchoo, president and chief executive officer of GE Healthcare IT. “Our strategic relationship with ICW enables GE Healthcare to accelerate our Centricity connectivity solutions and further extend our global capabilities. With our Centricity portfolio of electronic medical records, enterprise systems, clinical repositories and patient solutions, GE Healthcare is now one of the only companies to offer the full range of technology needs for global healthcare IT.”
Centricity Health Information Exchange connects, stores and shares clinical data from hospitals, physician offices, pharmacies, labs and other sources to help improve communication flow between care providers, patients and clinicians. The resulting network enables state, government or healthcare delivery organizations to create a secure exchange to share patient conditions, allergies, medication history and other appropriate clinical data across the continuum of care.
By improving the connection of disparate healthcare technology systems, GE is building on its healthymagination commitment to increase quality of care and access while lowering costs. Easier access to patient information helps clinicians make more informed decisions that can help improve care. Additionally, GE Healthcare’s integrated electronic medical record helps reduce repetitive tests and the risk of medical errors.
ICW brings more than ten years of intensive research and development of state-of-the-art solutions for electronic health information interoperability. The company’s eHealth infrastructure is in use globally within the Austrian national health system, the German Federal Ministry for Health and Social Security’s bIT4health consortium, the eHC in Bulgaria and others. This global breadth complements GE Healthcare’s HIE solutions that are installed at customer sites in Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Oregon.
GE Healthcare and ICW share a technology philosophy and commitment to developing standards-based healthcare technology. “Standards are essential to enable scaling of solutions to meet the demands of a global marketplace and to integrate third-party solutions to ensure the information exchanged is complete and timely,” said Peter Reuschel, CEO of ICW. “We are pleased to work with GE Healthcare on a vision to jointly evolve the connectivity solutions that we have each developed.”