Today, 70 to 80% of the resources in healthcare are devoted to managing symptom-based, advanced disease. Shifting resources to "early" health and developing technologies that allow healthcare providers to diagnose disease at the earliest possible stage, when there can be many treatment options, is better medicine. It also makes simple economic sense.

Consider cardiovascular disease. Currently, patients with cardiac disease have about a 45% chance of survival if treatment begins at onset of symptoms. An "early health" model made possible by advances in diagnostic tools such as cardiac biomarkers, non-invasive diagnostic imaging, targeted therapies, and IT-based disease management has the potential to nearly double the survival rates from cardiac disease. Applying these tools and identifying cardiovascular disease early can lower healthcare costs associated with advanced disease on the order of $60B in the U.S. alone, while helping preserve the quality of life for patients.

Similarly, costs for late-stage treatment of breast cancer (stage four) can be five to six times higher than treatment following early discovery in stage one. Survival rates associated with early discovery and treatment are nearly triple those of late-stage. Effective predictive and early screening solutions provide information that enables physicians to intervene earlier, before breast cancer advances on its deadly course.

At GE we believe in early health and we're investing in it. The technologies we are developing, along with those of other healthcare companies, are enabling clinicians to provide more promising options to patients. The results, even at this stage, are exciting. Invasive and non-invasive imaging methods are already helping physicians visualize plaques that may be an early indicator of cardiovascular disease and subtle vascular changes that may require treatment. Imaging agents are proving to be particularly potent tools that may assist in the earlier detection and diagnosis of disease.