• Fast and easy Web-access to advanced post processing and clinical tools with Centricity Advanced Web and PACS-IW
  • Clinical consulting, tele-reporting and live monitoring in one single tool

Dubai, UAE, 26 January 2009 – At this year’s Arab Health, GE Healthcare showcases its latest technological developments for image and information management, empowering any hospital IT infrastructure with e-Health enabling tools. This year’s focus is on information exchange, sharing workflow and building the virtual radiology and imaging department.

Across the region, healthcare providers are increasingly faced with the challenges of dealing with growing populations, rising operational costs and the need to increase quality of care while decreasing medical errors. GE Healthcare’s investments have helped drive healthcare IT advancements in the Middle East, contributing to the development of such areas as informatics and genomic research in the region while also allowing for faster, more effective treatments in everything from radiology to cardiology to ophthalmology.

Centricity Advanced Web and PACS-IW

The new applications Centricity Advanced Web and PACS-IW (web-based picture archiving and communication system) are the ideal complement to the existing solutions portfolio. For a referring physician, radiologist or clinician, the solution enables easy and fast web-based image access with state-of-the-art applications, fast image display and clinical tools. Centricity PACS-IW fulfills the expectations of small installations and meets the increasing demand of referring physicians for advanced post processing tools. The new web-based PACS solution is user-friendly, easy and fast to install, yet offers modern clinical tools like MIP/MPR (maximum or minimum intensity projection / multiple planar reconstruction) and advanced 3D technology to easily evaluate huge sets of data.

Centricity Advanced Web, as an addition to the Centricity Enterprise PACS, is the ideal solution for high expectations of clinicians who want to stay flexible, need a rich set of tools and wish to immediately discuss diagnostic results with their patients. Starting from a pulmologist to a neurologist or orthopedist, all of them see their requirements fulfilled. Even with a low bandwidth, the solution grants access to a big set of tools with a simple internet connection: MIP/MPR, integrated ultrasound, mammography and orthopedic tools, easy second opinion consulting, printing and burning of CDs from any PC and a lot more. The highlights are a very fast streaming technology with ‘pixel-on-demand’, image in report, easy authorisation concept via ‘grant access’ and the selective compression of image data up to diagnostic quality.

Centricity Imaging Portal

The new Centricity Imaging Portal facilitates cross hospital workload balance, multi-disciplinary clinical consulting, tele-radiology and home reporting, data care and privacy, as well as a de-centralised workflow in an XDS (cross document sharing) enabled environment. IT takes multi-disciplinary information sharing to the next level. Different authorities profit from a distributed IT investment where basically all departments can exchange inter-disciplinary patient images. In a cross-hospital and a multi-vendor IHE and XDS compliant environment the Centricity Imaging Portal allows access to a global patient history and facilitates multi-disciplinary conferences and secure web-access to images and documents. The goal is to share a common workflow rather than pure information, thus taking a step beyond radiology.

Cardiology IT solutions

This commitment to interoperability can also be seen in GE Healthcare’s cardiology IT solutions. Together with RIS/PACS (radiology information system / picture archiving and communication system) the system meets the cardiologist’s demand for advanced data management and PACS capabilities in a common infrastructure for cardiology and radiology. Centricity CA1000 and AW-Suite are a successful combination of review possibilities and state-of-the-art 3D analysis tools in an interoperable care environment. The new version Centricity Carddas Xi² 3.0 introduces a functional area for cardiology examinations in MR allowing an extremely fast diagnosis of MR images. Besides, Carddas offers a set of new features like the shift to .NET™ technology, the graphically advanced statistics tool to display statistical results, the scheduler for effective time management and an additional tap for clinical vessel based reporting. The tool to set up user specific data fields raises flexibility while documenting, for example, clinical studies or relevant data and, in addition, meets the expectations of a steadily growing demand for an individual user interface.

“We are proud to introduce so many new highlights at this year’s Arab Health,” said Juergen Reyinger, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare’s IT business. “Our solutions can definitely advance healthcare across the region, especially for those who are intensely looking for digital technologies in order to cope with the demographic, economic and social challenges in today’s rapidly changing and growing environment,” he added.

Moreover, the appointment of a dedicated general manager for GE Healthcare’s IT Sales Eastern and Africa Growth Regions (EAGM) business was a key decision to further strengthening GE’s position in these markets. The new leader, Sia Moussavi, with an 11-year longstanding career at GE Healthcare, brings tremendous sales and services experience. “I am very privileged to have the opportunity to support our people and teams in this pole,” said Sia Moussavi. “The EAGM region is an important growth area for our company and we will continue to invest in our people and business there. My priorities are to grow and strengthen the team and to shape our organisation around the expectations and demands of our customers,” he concluded.