GE发布医疗行业新行动策略

张琨

By PAUL GLADER
General Electric Co. plans to announce an initiative for its health-care business in Washington on Thursday.
The company has said, in an invitation for the event, that it will unveil GE's new efforts to improve "sustainability of global healthcare systems" involving health technology, independent living, rural health and cost containment.
People familiar with the matter said GE's effort is on the scale of its "Ecomagination" marketing and product-development initiative around environmental concerns. The new campaign focuses on how GE is improving access and quality to health care globally while lowering costs, these people said.
The people familiar with the matter said the health-care initiative will involve at least $1 billion in research-and-development funding. It is unclear if that total is new spending or includes existing GE expenditures. The Fairfield, Conn., company has been aiming to reposition its health-care group and to align its business units to benefit from White House priorities.
Executives from other companies involved in the initiative, including Intel Corp., insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. and hospital systems Intermountain Healthcare and Virtua, plan to be at the meeting with GE on Thursday. The Rwandan ambassador to the United States and an executive representing Chicago's community-health services also will attend. Last month, GE and Intel announced an alliance to develop and sell technology to help care for the elderly and chronically ill in their homes.
The new initiative is likely to involve a deeper push by GE into information technology for health care, such as electronic medical records. GE's Centricity suite of IT products helps patients and hospitals track and monitor records and progress.
John Dineen, the CEO of GE Healthcare, said in an interview in September that information technology was less than 10% of its $17 billion in annual revenue but would be a major engine of growth. "We're going to approach this with scale," said Mr. Dineen. "How do we double these type of businesses?"
Most of GE Healthcare's revenue now comes from diagnostic and imaging equipment. But sales are under pressure as public and private insurers try to reduce costs.
The administration of President Barack Obama has made improving the efficiency and lowering the cost of health care a major priority. It has earmarked $36 billion of its $787 billion stimulus funding to help doctors and hospitals install more electronic records. GE is one of many competitors in the area, including Siemens AG and Royal Philips Electronics NV.
GE's announcement also will coincide to a request from the Obama administration on Thursday for lawmakers to approve $63 billion over six years to combat public-health challenges such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS.
GE's health-care push will include additional efforts related to public health in developing countries. "You'd expect developing markets to become the bulk of our portfolio," said Mr. Dineen in September. He said such a shift could occur in as few as five years.