In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry faces a global crisis – fewer resources to meet a growing need for quality, affordable healthcare. Is there an opportunity to create innovative solutions that will bring technology and public-private partnerships together to support and enable healthcare professionals to deliver better care?
In Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), much like the rest of the world, hospitals and health ministries are under severe pressure from a host of conflating challenges – cost pressures, staffing shortages, and rising patient loads caused by postponed care and long-term trends related to rising populations and an increasing burden of disease.
Digital innovations, remote solutions and AI are crucial in addressing these challenges by helping improve the way administrators, technologists, doctors and nurses do their work, ultimately allowing doctors and nurses to spend more time directly caring for patients.
But technology does not work in isolation. It takes people and partnerships to turn technological innovations into patient-centric solutions, ones that put care back into every area and aspect of healthcare. That’s the driving force behind GE Healthcare’s Life Care Solutions – an innovation driven, patient-centric approach to closing the gap between resource and need.
What does this mean in practice?
COVID-19 and the beginnings of telehealth innovation
In moments of crisis, innovation rises, adapts and enables change to take place in double time. The COVID-19 crisis was no different. It helped speed the adoption of many innovative solutions, like telehealth consultations, which allowed physicians to see more patients, even patients living or working in far-flung areas. In regions like SSA, where access into the market can be a challenge, GE Healthcare experts have guided technologists to perform advanced procedures to help capture precise images that are crucial to helping diagnose and treat patients. Even machine maintenance is changing. GE Healthcare engineers have delivered remote preventative maintenance across SSA, Africa and the Middle East, to help keep machines running to the highest standards, saving the time that would have been spent getting a technician to the facility.
Many of GE’s remote technologies, which stepped up to the plate during global lockdowns, will continue to play a vital role in making quality healthcare affordable and accessible to the most remote and under-resourced areas. Even now, GE’s Digital Expert remote training continues to bridge the skills gap by ensuring that staff in hospitals and clinics are trained to operate the most advanced imaging equipment and make use of the latest updates and enhancements. And in cases where advance trained technologists are not available, remote clinical support becomes vital to ensuring that complex imaging scans can still be given at the point of care.
Another area where digitization is creating opportunities to improve patient care is in the management of large-scale healthcare resources. GE Healthcare is helping ministries of health and healthcare groups address challenges around costs and staffing, while continuing to enhance care and hospital workflows through its Command Center software suite. In one leading hospital group in Saudia Arabia, the Command Center is being used to direct ambulances to healthcare facilities where beds and doctors are available to care for the incoming patient and their condition. Globally, the Command Center is helping hospitals achieve up to 70% reductions in operating room holds, 30% faster allocation of patients to emergency beds, and 10% reductions in bed request turnaround times. This elevated efficiency in organizing patient flow and diagnosis to treatment timelines, has shown to mimic the added value of hospital bed expansions.
When data enables precision healthcare
One of the more exciting opportunities for the future of healthcare lies in leveraging the most abundant and underutilized resources of modern times – data. Currently only 5% of all data generated by imaging equipment, patient records and other medical information is used to improve patient diagnosis, care and outcomes. The other 95%, which could be used to improve workflow efficiencies and clinical outcomes, and ultimately deliver more personalized, precision healthcare, is being wasted. But not for long.
GE’s intelligent clinical surveillance solutions are helping healthcare providers in SSA and the Middle East to achieve this. For example, ICU patients in remote hospitals can now be continuously monitored using advanced algorithms which gather patient data from multiple sources to alert the Tele ICU team for signs of deterioration enabling them to alert the bedside team and engage in the care of the patient at the right moment.
Cardiac patients can have their ECG exams transmitted immediately to the relevant facility for a quick evaluation of their condition to plan the appropriate treatment. This is made possible by an advanced ECG management solution (MUSE) which receives, analyses, and compares the exams with previous ones for inpatients or those being transported by ambulance to the hospital.
GE Healthcare also uses software and big data to compare a patient’s unique scan with a database of millions, aiding clinicians with oncology-oriented image analysis to identify possible illnesses, and in this way acts like a second opinion.
This is what precision healthcare is all about – gathering data from millions of patients about symptoms, illness progression and treatment, and combining that with data about each patient to create a more personalized approach to healthcare.
AI improves positioning and imaging
In the field of AI, GE Healthcare has leveraged Edison AI and analytics to create powerful solutions that help improve operations and patient care. For example, AI is helping to optimize patient setup for all types of imaging scans, so sessions take less time and patients are exposed to less radiation, when it comes to X-Ray, MR and CT scans.
Last year, GE Healthcare introduced AI solutions that support the identification of breast cancer, and now this support is being expanded to assist clinicians in the assessment of thyroid, liver and kidney cancer. That is an exciting development that will have a far-reaching impact in the prevention and detection of cancers.
In terms of advancements in imaging, our wireless handheld ultrasound devices are quickly becoming the new stethoscope – a handy, non-invasive screening tool to help doctors quickly and easily check a patient’s health in areas such as heart, abdomen and lungs. Weighing as little as 200g, the range and flexibility of GE Healthcare’s ultrasound technology is exemplified by “active imaging,” which delivers real-time intraoperative ultrasound to help surgeons make critical decisions on the spot.
We must become partners in preventing illness
When it comes to healthcare, advanced technologies and AI solutions are only as strong as the people that drive and support them. Partnerships and collaborations are key to delivering innovative solutions that optimize clinical outcomes and patient care. That’s why GE works closely with hospital groups, clinics and health ministries to find better ways to leverage technology to help clinics operate more efficiently, manage patient volumes better, while continuing to deliver high-quality, patient-centric care. In the long term, this means working with customers to transition their healthcare systems from the current focus of responding to illness to a focus on preventing illness. Because that, for GE Healthcare, is what a true partner does – they don’t just help you find smarter solutions to new and greater challenges, they help you have a greater impact on your customers and community.
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GE Healthcare BIO
About GE Healthcare GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services to meet the demand for increased access, enhanced quality and more affordable healthcare around the world. GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter – great people and technologies taking on tough challenges. From medical imaging, software & IT, patient monitoring and diagnostics to drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies and performance improvement solutions, GE Healthcare helps medical professionals deliver great healthcare to their patients.
For additional information or queries please contact :
GE Healthcare Marketing Manager, SSA : Sophie le Cordeur
sophie.lecordeur@ge.com