GE Healthcare’s Smart Patient Room to Begin Data Collection

• Next generation technology being developed to help hospitals and staff identify and mitigate patient safety risks
• Being designed to provide real-time monitoring of safety protocols, such as hand hygiene compliance, clinical rounding adherence and patient falls
• Patient safety pilot part of GE’s healthymagination initiative, which seeks to provide better quality healthcare to more people
• Medical error is the eighth leading cause of death in the U. S., and falls cost the U.S. healthcare system $1 billion annually

GE Healthcare announced today that the Smart Patient Room pilot at Bassett Medical Center has been approved by the site’s Institutional Review Board to begin data collection. The innovative technology solution was installed as part of GE’s healthymagination initiative with the goal of helping healthcare providers to reduce patient safety risks and improve patient outcomes.

"GE is developing a unique solution for the healthcare industry that helps hospitals and staff identify and mitigate patient safety risks while offering meaningful solutions to improve patient outcomes,” said Jan De Witte, President & CEO, GE Healthcare Performance Solutions. "GE’s real-time, adaptable solution will provide actionable data to healthcare providers regarding patient safety and potential medical errors which in turn will affect the necessary behavioral changes to avoid preventable errors.”

With the integration of this new technology into existing hospital rooms, the Smart Patient Room solution is designed to provide clinicians with real-time monitoring for patient risk and the ability to intervene via gentle notification. The system is designed to track protocol adherence such as proper hand hygiene compliance before and after interacting with a patient, periodic clinical rounding, and monitor for increased risk of patient fall.

"Patient safety is a concern for hospitals across the U.S., as more patients enter the health system,” said William Streck, M.D., President & CEO, Bassett Medical Center. "At Bassett we are very excited to be working alongside GE Healthcare and GE Global Research to design and pilot what is meant to be an industry solution for hospitals to identify and mitigate patient safety risks and improve patient outcomes.”

The Smart Patient Room solution is being developed at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, NY and currently being piloted at Bassett Medical Center, a 180-bed, acute care inpatient teaching facility in Cooperstown, NY. The technology is intended as a flexible solutions platform designed to meet the needs of the specific hospital system.

According to the Institute of Medicine, medical error is the eighth leading cause of death in the U. S., accounting for an estimated 44,000 to 100,000 preventable deaths per year. Falls alone cost the U.S. healthcare system $1 billion annually, according to the American Hospital Association.

The Smart Patient Room can collect real-time information from the system to generate actionable data to manage clinical workflow, and uncover opportunities for influencing process and behavioral changes to create a safer patient environment.

"The partnership between GE Healthcare and GE’s Global Research Center provides a unique advantage to develop innovative technologies and solutions that will address the most pressing issues facing healthcare today,” said Mike Harsh, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, GE Healthcare. "The Smart Patient Room is a perfect, tangible example of how GE is leveraging that combined research and business expertise to develop some of the most dynamic solutions in healthcare.”

The announcement was made today during the "Future of Healthcare Technology” event at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, NY. GE also highlighted two other healthymagination technology projects at the event:

• In the battle against Tuberculosis, teams are working to develop point-of-care diagnostic tests to enable care providers in the field to diagnose quickly whether a patient has the disease and if so, which strain. Quick diagnosis is important to allow care providers to prescribe the appropriate medication for recovery. According to the World Health Organization, in 2007 there were an estimated 1.8 million deaths from Tuberculosis, mostly in developing countries.
• A second project is focused on GE’s development of a dynamic new imaging platform for the operating room with the goal of helping surgeons better visualize cancerous tissue they are trying to remove, while avoiding sensitive areas such as nerve endings. Tools to better visualize cancerous tissue and sensitive nerves would provide more clarity for surgeons while also helping them improve patient outcomes.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our "healthymagination” vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $16 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.

For our latest news, please visit http://newsroom.gehealthcare.com

For more details about healthymagination, visit www.healthymagination.com/news. Follow the conversation today on Twitter at @GEhealthy.

About GE Global Research

GE Global Research is the hub of technology development for all of GE's businesses. Our scientists and engineers redefine what’s possible, drive growth for our businesses and find answers to some of the world’s toughest problems.

We innovate 24 hours a day, with sites in Niskayuna, New York; Bangalore, India; Shanghai, China; and Munich, Germany. Visit GE Global Research on the web at www.ge.com/research. Connect with our technologists at http://www.edisonsdesk.com and http://twitter.com/edisonsdesk.

About Bassett Healthcare Network

The Bassett Healthcare Network is an integrated health care system that provides care and services to people living in an eight county region covering 5600 square miles in upstate New York. The organization includes six corporately affiliated hospitals, as well as skilled nursing facilities, health centers and health partners in related fields.

Bassett Medical Center, the foundation of the network, is an acute care inpatient teaching facility in Cooperstown, New York with academic, teaching and research missions. Providing a wide range of specialty care, the medical center offers postgraduate residency training programs in Medicine and Surgery and maintains a strong academic program through its affiliation with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, an affiliation recently highlighted by the establishment of a Columbia medical school campus at Bassett.

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