General Electric's healthcare division, in partnership with several top medical institutions, has announced a $200 million initiative to digitize patient medical information, according to reports.
Although electronic medical records have the potential to greatly reduce costs and errors, implementation has been a challenge, due to patient privacy and security issues.
GE Healthcare wants to provide the technology to enable medical professionals to more efficiently share patient records. The company also hopes to provide physicians with near real-time alerts on cutting-edge research and treatment findings, according to CNN.com. Eventually, the company wants doctors to be able to find the best medical treatments for individual patients based on databases of extensive medical histories, the Associated Press reported.
The company's announcement came at a time when GE Healthcare has been struggling financially. Earnings during the first half of this year fell 4% after declining 3% last year.
GE is hopeful that the decision to invest in healthcare technology is a smart one. "Strategically, it's a great place long term," General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey R. Immelt was quoted as saying in the Associated Press report. "At the end of the day, governments are going to spend money on things that drive productivity," he added. GE's partners include Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare, Montefiore, and the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center in the initiative.
GE is not alone. Other companies are well aware of the potential payoffs, and there are several other new players in this industry, including Google and Microsoft. Google Health lets users store their medical information in a central place, and has partnered with teaching hospitals, including The Cleveland Clinic and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The service is free to both patients and partners. Last month, Aetna tied up with Microsoft's HealthVault to offer customers an electronic "vault" to store medical histories.
(Image: GE)
Comments
A key topic with e-medical records (whether the provider is GE, Google, Microsoft or someeone else) is patient privacy. Maybe patients can bolster privacy by inserting legal terms of access (like an end-user license agreement) into the content of their electronic medical records. The terms could set binding rules for who may view data and when. The idea is not legal advice, just something to think about. --Ben
This is a good market for GE; electronic medical records can increase efficiency and only about 10% - 15% of hospitals -- and about the same percent of doctors -- have adopted EMR systems.
What’s tougher is the big price tag: Will electronic records really decrease healthcare costs? We know there will be a spike in costs at the outset, and that the systems are likely to cost more than anticipated. The ROI is still unclear.
Even trickier is the underlying logic of these systems, especially around the need to assure and deliver quality, consistent care. Do they incorporate the smartest diagnostic and quality care guidelines? Do they make evidence-based clinical information available at the bedside, along with the patient’s individual and historical information? Not all EMRs are created equal.
Possibilities? www.healthcaretownhall.com
Optimal patient care requires physicians to collaborate. With over 500,000 medical organizations in the US, healthcare is mainly small business. Though only 12% of the 6,400 hospitals have implemented EMRs, hospitals have many other information systems that are used to manage and track patient care. Though hospitals consume half of the healthcare expenditures in the US, most patient care is performed in smaller group practices. These groups are small businesses and operate very lean. Physicians are concerned that sharing patient information will make it easy for other organizations to steal patients. Not all patient information should be accessible to every organization – patient information must be managed by both the patient and the patient’s physicians. Referring physician relationships are critical to a medical group’s success. Collaborating on patient care is essential to achieving optimal outcomes for patients. Most of GE’s technology has been acquired; it will be interesting to see if GE can really be a software technology company that builds product from the ground up. GE’s network must provide open source APIs to for mass adoption.
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