Waukesha, WI - GE Healthcare displayed its continued commitment to advances in Cardiology today, by announcing the company's sponsorship of two American College of Cardiology (ACC) Fellows. GE is the only non-pharmaceutical company to offer such fellowships, which include two-year career development grants to Cardiologists devoted to advancing cardiac research using imaging technology.

GE Healthcare Fellows Steven Lloyd, M.D., Ph.D. and Farouc Jaffer, M.D., Ph.D. were announced on March 6 during the ACC convocation at the conclusion of the 2005 Scientific Session in Orlando, Florida. Both awardees were selected because of their devotion to advances in cardiovascular imaging research.

Steven Lloyd, M.D., Ph.D. was selected from the University of Alabama Medical Center in Birmingham. Dr. Lloyd's work is based on the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in assessing cardiovascular disease. His current research focuses on the effect of diseases and drugs on the metabolism of the heart and on new applications in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to the study the vascular system. According to Dr. Lloyd, "The ACCF/GE Healthcare Career Development Award will help lay the groundwork in understanding the physiologic significance of peripheral arterial disease and in deciding among treatment options for patients."

Farouc Jaffer, M. D., Ph.D. was selected from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Jaffer is the Director of the Cardiovascular Molecular Imaging Program in the Center for Molecular Imaging and an Attending Interventional Cardiologist at MGH. Dr. Jaffer's research will apply molecular imaging technology to diagnose biologically acute vascular thrombi (blood clots), the underlying cause of heart attacks and strokes. He will be using an integrated SPECT/CT imaging system to non-invasively detect these thrombi. "The ACCF/GE Healthcare Career Development Award will allow me to develop the molecular imaging technology to better diagnose and ultimately treat thrombotic vascular disease in patients," said Jaffer.

According to Laura King, Global Vice President of Interventional, Cardiology & Surgery, GE Healthcare, GE's sponsorship of these ACC Fellows is just one of many GE Healthcare sponsored collaborations with the Cardiology community.

"We are very excited about GE Healthcare's first-ever ACC Fellowships," said King. "These doctors have enormous potential with important research in the screening, detection and diagnosis of heart disease. GE is committed to providing cardiologists like Dr. Lloyd and Dr. Jaffer the latest and most advanced diagnostic technologies, leading the way in cardiac care."

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies that will shape a new age of patient care. GE Healthcare’s expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, disease research, drug discovery and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is dedicated to detecting disease earlier and helping physicians tailor treatment for individual patients. GE Healthcare offers a broad range of services to improve productivity in healthcare and enable healthcare providers to better diagnose, treat and manage patients with conditions such as cancer, neurological and cardiovascular diseases.

GE Healthcare is a $14 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) that is headquartered in the United Kingdom. Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 42,500 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.