20/03-09   -   Press releases

Frost & Sullivan Recognizes GE Healthcare for Strategic Leadership in Acquiring Dynamic Imaging to Grow its Imaging Informatics Business

Based on its recent analysis of the medical imaging market, Frost & Sullivan presents GE Healthcare with the 2009 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for "Growth Strategy Leadership of the Year." The honor serves as recognition of the growth path that GE´s imaging informatics business has embarked upon since the firm´s acquisition of Dynamic Imaging (DI) in October 2007.

"The DI acquisition has provided GE with leading edge RIS/PACS technology and a winning business model that have consistently earned the appraisal of the market," says Frost & Sullivan Senior Industry Analyst Nadim Daher. "By capitalizing effectively on this strategic acquisition throughout the subsequent year, GE Healthcare has been able to stimulate its imaging informatics business despite challenging market conditions and saturation, while strengthening its leadership position in both the North American and global imaging informatics markets."

During the past year the newly-branded Dynamic Imaging Solutions division has helped GE Healthcare drive significant customer growth across all segments of the North American healthcare provider market including hospitals, outpatient imaging centers and physician offices. Further, the unique ability to offer Web-based RIS/PACS for any size hospital or outpatient imaging market (based upon Centricity RIS-IC and DI´s acquired outpatient imaging center RIS, respectively) is a "sweet spot" in the industry, considering the increasing saturation in the PACS market and the opportune lower end of the spectrum, left otherwise underserved by GE prior to the acquisition.

Shortly after the acquisition, GE Healthcare re-branded DI´s IntegradWeb PACS as GE Centricity PACS-IW. In early 2008, they began offering the PACS-IW solution based upon English character sets worldwide, while supporting local market specificities with character sets for German, Italian, French and Japanese as announced at RSNA 2008. The aggressive international expansion strategy it has launched is helping GE Healthcare increase its global footprint outside the maturing North American market, thereby creating a healthier pipeline and offering greater immunity to annual variations in each country´s imaging IT market. It has also better positioned the company to the various stimulus plans being launched globally.

"In addition to strengthening GE Healthcare´s ability to continue to grow its share of the imaging informatics market, the DI acquisition has also created internal synergies within the company. The collaborative efforts conducted in conjunction with the Centricity group are proving to be extremely beneficial for GE," notes Daher.

Most recently, the company has delivered on the promise of developing a Web-based diagnostic viewer, based on the PACS-IW viewer and advanced streaming technology, for Centricity PACS customers. The Centricity PACS Web Diagnostic "Web DX" which received 510K in October 2008 and was released for sale at RSNA 2008, is available to the worldwide Centricity PACS customer base and is set to benefit customer retention, considering that the importance of sophisticated tools and remote access capabilities is increasingly acknowledged in radiology.

Its Web-based architecture is just one appealing feature of the PACS-IW offering. The solution is also recognized for outstanding system performance and reliability, and garners consistently high user satisfaction ratings. As they face increasing economic pressure, PACS customers are focusing on improving their operational efficiency and workflow, and will therefore become increasingly demanding for certain features of the PACS-IW solution, such as its flexibility, scalability and cost effectiveness; its rapid implementation plan; its standards-based platform and advanced integration capabilities; its single database architecture; and anytime, anywhere access to all-online data.

Effective customer referring physician marketing programs such as the company´s BOOST program, as well as the suite of physician office solutions offered by GE, are some of the ways GE assists present day PACS customers in their effort to differentiate, and grow their imaging businesses more effectively. GE is continually expanding the PACS-IW offering within the enterprise, beyond the core area of radiology. Building on the strength that DI has developed in radiology while operating as an independent vendor for many years prior to the acquisition; GE is continually utilizing its resources to extend its Web-based PACS solution to other clinical areas such as oncology and cardiology.

"Expansion through the enterprise is yet another growth path that GE has embarked upon, and through which it is capitalizing on its strategic acquisition of DI," concludes Daher. "The multifaceted growth strategy that GE Healthcare has put in effect since 2008 is revitalizing the company´s imaging informatics business and fueling its growth multifold."

These developments have earned GE many successes in the market recently, and make GE Healthcare the deserving recipient of the 2009 Frost & Sullivan Growth Strategy Leadership of the Year Award in medical imaging. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated an exceptional growth strategy within the industry.

Frost & Sullivan´s Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

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 www.gehealthcare.com.

About Frost & Sullivan

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