Fact Sheet

For more than 100 years, health care providers worldwide have relied on GE Medical Systems for high-quality medical technology, services and productivity solutions. GE Medical Systems’ offerings include networking and productivity tools, clinical information systems, patient monitoring systems, conventional and digital X-ray, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR), ultrasound and bone mineral densitometry, positron emission tomography (PET), and nuclear medicine.

FAST FACTS

  • GE Medical Systems global headquarters: Waukesha, Wisconsin, U.S.A., near Milwaukee
  • President and CEO: Joseph M. Hogan
  • $10 billion in annual sales
  • 32,000 employees in 34 countries
  • 300 offices worldwide, including 40 manufacturing locations
  • Customers in more than 100 countries worldwide

GE Healthcare IS THE PARENT COMPANY OF:
· GE Healthcare Information Technologies
· GE Healthcare OEC
· GE Healthcare Cardiology
·GE Healthcare Ultrasound
· Instrumentarium, including:
·Instrumentarium Imaging
· Datex-Ohmeda
· Deio
· Ohmeda Medical
· Sorodex
· Medko Medical


HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS FOR EVERY AREA OF THE HOSPITAL
EXPANDING CIRLCE OF CARE
GE Healthcare will help healthcare providers transform care through:

  • Clinical excellence: Developing leading edge systems that address real clinical needs
  • Care continuity: Utilizing technologies to optimize patient care and caregiver productivity across the continuum of care
  • Decision support: Providing new solutions to help caregivers accelerate and validate clinical decision making

    GE Healthcare’ HISTORY OF MEDICAL INNOVATION
    · 1896: The General Electric Company’s Elihu Thomson builds electrical equipment for the production of X-rays and demonstrates the use of stereoscopic “roentgen” pictures for diagnosing bone fractures and locating foreign objects in the body. A year earlier Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen introduced his discovery of X-rays to the world.

    · 1900: GE establishes the first laboratory in United States industry dedicated to scientific research in Schenectady, New York

    · 1913: GE develops the hot cathode, high vacuum X-ray tube. By replacing the cold aluminum cathode with the hot tungsten filament in a high vacuum, the company provides tubes with better control and greater output than had ever been achieved. The development greatly facilitates the use of X-rays for medical diagnosis and treatment.

    · 1920: GE develops an oil-immersed X-ray tube and transformer assembly, weighing only 20 pounds and suitable for dental and portable X-ray use

    · 1923: GE Healthcare is set up as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the General Electric Company

    · 1962: GE builds a superconducting magnet that breaks through the 100,000 gauss barrier, a level of magnetic intensity that a few years earlier seemed unreachable. Technology emerging from this and other pioneering efforts of the era are crucial to the development of the modern medical diagnostic technique of magnetic resonance imaging.

    · 1968: GE’s Jacob G. Rabatin develops a high efficiency X-ray phosphor permitting major reductions in patient exposure to medical X-rays. Rabatin’s development of the Lanthanum Oxybromide family of phosphors makes possible X-ray screens that are capable of reducing patient exposure to one quarter previous levels.

    · 1974: GE Healthcare Information Technologies introduces MUSE®, the first computer-based central storage and analysis system for electrocardiograms

    · 1976: A team from GE’s Research and Development Center and the Medical Systems Division develop a Computed Tomography scanner that takes detailed cross-section X-ray pictures of the human body in less than 5 seconds – 4 to 60 times faster than other total body scanners in use at the time. The high speed minimizes image blurring due to patient motion and provides superior detail.

    · 1976: GE Healthcare Information Technologies announces CASE®, the first computer-assisted exercise testing system

    · 1983: GE Healthcare scientists develop the Signa® Magnetic Resonance Imaging System. The system is based on a giant superconducting magnet with a highly uniform field 20,000 times as strong as that of earth. It produces cross-sectional images of internal body structures with unprecedented detail and clarity, particularly for soft tissues difficult or impossible to image by X-ray methods.

    · 1985: GE Healthcare Information Technologies unveils the first cellular telephone transmission of 12-lead electrocardiograms from a pre-hospital setting

    · 1992: GE Healthcare develops and installs the first Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) at Madigan Army Medical Center

    · 1993: Clinical investigations begin on a Magnetic Resonance-guided Therapy system developed by researchers at GE Healthcare and GE’s R&D Center. MRT provides direct access to the patient during the imaging process, giving physicians a real-time view of internal organs.

    · 1997: GE Healthcare adds Business Solutions to its portfolio of products and services. This group would deliver healthcare consulting expertise, tools and techniques designed to improve customer productivity, quality and cost management. Over the next few years, Business Solutions will expand and evolve into Performance Solutions, bringing people, processes and technology together to create better value for customers and improve the delivery of healthcare.

    · 1998: GE Healthcare introduces the LightSpeed™ QX/i CT system, the world’s first scanner enabling doctors to capture multiple images simultaneously and at a speed that is six times faster than traditional single-slice scanners. The system saves precious time in life-or-death traumas. The product is the first Design for Six Sigma product to enter the marketplace, with less than three defects per million opportunities -- 99.9999% perfection.

    · 1999: A major breakthrough in imaging technology from GE Healthcare and GE’s R&D Center – functional anatomic mapping – is expected to improve the physician’s ability to accurately diagnose patients by providing a clear picture of the extent and precise location of disease. It merges the ability of nuclear medicine to show the functioning of internal organs with anatomical images of digital X-rays.

    · 1999: GE Healthcare announces the GE Signa OpenSpeed™, a powerful high-field open magnetic resonance imaging system that allows doctors to scan patients three times faster than any other commercially available MRI system while also accommodating large patients and those with claustrophobia

    · 2000: Full field digital mammography is developed by GE Healthcare that represents a breakthrough in breast cancer screening and diagnostics. New digital imagery provides greater clarity in mammography images and allows for easier manipulation (zoom, 3-D rotation) than standard mammography.

    · 2000: GE Healthcare unveils the Innova® 2000 all-digital cardiovascular imaging system, the first and only flat panel cardiovascular X-ray system in the world

    · 2001: Developed by GE Healthcare Information Technologies, the GE Corometrics® 120 Series is the first all-in-one monitoring system to give doctors more information to accurately assess mothers and fetuses during labor and delivery

    · 2001: GE Healthcare Information Technologies introduces the first non-invasive Hemodynamic Patient Monitoring System with CardioDynamics’ ICG Technology

    · 2001: GE Healthcare announces the Discovery™ LS, a breakthrough technology built on functional anatomic mapping that is designed to help physicians diagnose and localize cancer faster than ever before. It’s the first imaging technology to combine today’s most sophisticated CT and positron emission tomography systems, producing images that provide anatomic and metabolic information at one time.

    · 2001: GE Healthcare Information Technologies unveils the GE Centricity™ Information System, the world’s first comprehensive clinical information system that integrates patient data from every care area in the hospital into a single electronic medical record that can span a patient’s entire lifetime

    · 2002: GE Healthcare introduces GE EXCITE™, a breakthrough technology allowing doctors to improve their diagnosis of conditions in the heart, vascular disease, stroke, abdominal and brain disorders, and common problems in the knee and shoulder.

    · 2002: GE Healthcare showcases the GE Innova® 4100, a new all-digital imaging system that can enable minimally invasive techniques in lieu of major surgery to diagnose and treat patients. It is the world's first large-format digital flat panel X-ray system for angiographic imaging and features GE's patented Revolution™ digital flat panel detector, creating extremely detailed, real-time images to guide physicians during cardiovascular and peripheral vascular procedures.

    · 2003: GE Healthcare unveils the Lightspeed RT, the world's first multi-slice, wide-bore CT system complete with a portfolio of advanced applications for radiation therapy. With the advanced oncology applications and powerful productivity workflow engine, oncologists are receiving the total package with increased precision in cancer care, especially for advanced treatment procedures such as IMRT.

    · 2003: GE Healthcare unveils VoiceScan on its LOGIQ 9 ultrasound scanner, which is a voice activated control feature that allows physicians and sonographers to control system functions by voice command alone. By talking into a wireless headset, physicians and sonographers can interact with the LOGIQ 9 scanner and have it perform more than 150 actions.

    · 2003: GE Healthcare introduces the Infinia ™ Hawkeye ® a revolutionary combined nuclear medicine/computed tomography (CT) system. The new system delivers unprecedented image quality and provides diagnostic confidence to physicians with a proven impact on patient management.

    · 2003: GE Healthcare unveils Signa ® Excite™ 3.0T on its MRI system, offering the world’s largest patient imaging volume with a full 45cm field-of-view imaging capability. This system enables optimized neurovascular, orthopedic, abdominal, and cardiovascular applications.

    · 2003: GE Healthcare partners with the Indiana Heart Hospital, the nation’s first comprehensive all-digital heart hospital, considered to be the “hospital of the future” because of its technology advancements and innovative focus on patients. Because of the all-digital environment, health care providers are able to spend more time at patients’ bedsides, improving patient care and reducing medical errors.