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Ed Yeates ReportingGeneral Electric and Intermountain Health Care announced today a new partnership that will have worldwide implications on healthcare technology. The partnership will bring a new research center to Utah.
More than 30 years ago a pioneering effort at LDS Hospital launched the first of its kind computer system to monitor patient care. After evolving for decades now, General Electric believes the world wants a piece of it and much more.
In the 70's Dr. Homer Warner fired up a large cumbersome computer that even then was revolutionizing patient care. Warner was here again today as General Electric and IHC announced plans to take what he's developed - what has been evolving now for three decades - to higher levels, and beyond.
Marc Probst, IHC Chief Information Officer: "I think it's basically infinitesimal what could be built into it and the way the system is developed."
The computer software has already converted patient records from paper to electronic files. It monitors their care at bedside, keeping track of medications and alerting care-givers of potential mistakes before they happen. But with General Electric coming to the table, technology will push the boundaries even more.
Vishal Wanshoo, G.E. Healthcare Information Technologies: "It really impacts the quality of care. It provides safer care and we really think its transformation in terms of how health care practice is practiced not only here in the United States, but across the world."
As of today, the HELP system, as it's called, monitors 200 million medical transactions per day. Forty years from now, we're talking about billions.
Better record keeping, that's only part of it. New software will interface patient data with radiology, labs, robotic surgery devices - all kinds of new generation equipment. Physicians will have unparalleled data on each patient. Diagnosis, surgeries, prescriptions and more - they'll all be computer interfaced and more precise!
There are lots of potential payoffs from this partnership, but in the end, according to the Governor, "I think that through this relationship, patients will be better served. And at the end of the day, that's a very important consideration."
Over a ten year period, the research center. based in West Valley City, could create upwards of 200 new jobs.
