Sustainable Healthcare

Healthcare is a global problem, but one that doesn’t lend itself to global solutions. Every region faces different health challenges and every country has different systems for ensuring their citizens are able to access the healthcare they need.

Everywhere around the world three things are common to the healthcare challenge: the need for quality care that is accessible to more people at an affordable price. In Europe there is universal access to healthcare, but some feel the quality of care is not adequate. In China, the main problem is access, with 300 million people outside of the healthcare system because they can’t afford the doctors’ fees. In the U.S., it is the high cost of healthcare that is causing most concern.

GE strategy is driven by meeting patient and healthcare providers’ needs, with a step-change in quality, access and cost. To do this, GE Healthcare takes an in country-for country approach, investing in local R&D teams to design products that work in each environment and to keep them working even in challenging environments.

Over the past year we have launched the Brivo range of baby warmers, CT scanners, digital X-rays and MR systems. Designed to be easy to use and robust, they take advantage of the advances found in the high-end machines but with capabilities suited for use in emerging markets at a price point appropriate for those markets.

In China alone, there are 80,000 smaller hospitals and clinics that lack modern equipment. GE already has approximately 1,000 engineers working on product development in China, who work with governments to understand their priorities and inform their policies. In 2010 we hired and trained 500 new sales representatives to serve 12,000 of these hospitals.

Sometimes what is needed to solve health challenges is not a healthcare product at all. In many countries, the biggest vector for the transmission of disease is dirty water. In other places, the problem is that hospitals lack reliable energy supplies. In other cases it is capital to invest in cost-saving solutions.

Healthymagination is a business initiative that brings all of GE’s businesses together in a six-year, $6 billion commitment to deliver better care to more people at lower cost.

Our healthymagination commitments are to, by 2015:

• Invest $3 billion in R&D, $2 billion in finance and $1 billion in technology and content
• Launch 100 innovations that lower cost, increase access and encourage innovation for all, and improve quality by 15%
• Work with partners to focus innovation on critical needs for efficient technologies, healthcare information technologies, broader access and consumer-driven health
• Increase the value gap between our own healthcare costs and healthcare earnings
• Engage and report on our progress

Within GE Healthcare, the healthymagination principles of cost, quality and access have been adopted across the board. This ensures that every product or solution developed starts from customers’ problems and measurably improves care. Every product, not just those seeking healthymagination certification, has to demonstrate clear clinical and economic improvements over existing products.

GE’s philanthropic work also supports these same goals. Developing Health™ is GE Foundation’s $50 million program providing grant funding and volunteer support to non-profit health centers in the United States, while in countries such as Ghana, Cambodia, Indonesia and Honduras, Developing Health Globally™ (DHG) is investing in upgrading the capabilities of rural district hospitals. The goal of both programs is to improve healthcare delivery for vulnerable people. The programs draw on GE products, expertise and employee engagement to provide a sustainable solution, including training in parts and after-installation service. In turn they have provided a valuable lesson for GE on what it takes to solve healthcare problems in the most challenging environments.

GE has so far invested $1.3 billion in healthymagination research and launched 43 validated products. Many of these are low-cost medical products in the Brivo range.

In 2011, the first non-healthcare product received healthymagination certification. It was developed jointly with Innovative Water Technologies, a Colorado-based, privately owned business that had been a licensed distributor and installer of GE’s formerly owned Homespring water filtration system. It was a key product following the Haiti earthquake, when GE’s disaster response team identified water purification as a vital priority.

The in country-for country approach also informs GE’s engagement with governments on health issues. There are some overarching principles that we advocate for, such as making better use of data, concentrating on prevention and early detection, and allowing international trade and markets to prevail to reduce costs and enable more creative healthcare solutions to be found. However, much of our health policy advocacy is tailored to solving problems in particular countries.

Game-changing solutions

Game-changing solutions are needed that alter the way health services themselves are delivered. More isn’t always better. For example, the U.S. spends well above the average of other wealthier countries on healthcare, but has only average results. Russia provides hospital beds and doctors at the highest levels, but its citizens’ health is well below average, while Chile spends the same percentage of its GDP on a smaller number of hospitals and doctors but has a healthier population.

Better health starts well before people seek medical treatment. It is critical to arm people with more knowledge so they can take preventive steps sooner. In the U.S., healthymagination is backed by a consumer-facing campaign sharing imaginative ideas and developing mobile apps to encourage healthy eating and exercise. Through our HealthAhead program, we engage GE employees, retirees and families in creating a culture of health at work. The goal is that all our sites with more than 100 employees will be certified as healthy workplaces by 2012. To meet this requirement each site must demonstrate a wide-ranging package of measures, from instituting a tobacco-free campus to providing healthy food and nutritional information in cafeterias and vending machines, as well as employee health risk counseling and screening. To date, 17% of GE sites with more than 100 employees have been HealthAhead certified in 2010.

We also believe that hospitals and healthcare systems can be made much more efficient. We have developed business solutions for managing hospital assets, and for helping hospitals organize, measure and manage healthcare delivery. We have also launched a partnership with Intel providing solutions for home monitoring. This allows patients to be released earlier from hospitals and to have daily check-ups without going to the physician’s office, getting real-time feedback to help them manage their own condition.