Last year, GE Healthcare announced a $100 million investment in health IT as part of its visionary healthymagination program. The effort acknowledges that health care organizations need to invest now in order to prepare for forthcoming federal incentives as well as penalties related to health IT systems.

GE's Stimulus Simplicity program, an interest-free, deferred payment plan that guarantees product certification, helps physician offices and hospitals that invest in GE's EMR products, GE Centricity® EMR and Centricity Enterprise solutions, maximize the potential benefits of the increased focus on EMR under the ARRA federal stimulus bill. GE's financial services business, GE Capital, is providing the financing.

GE reported to DOTmed an acceleration of customer adoptions of its health IT solutions in 2010.
"The good news is people are actually taking advantage of what we are doing and we see a really interesting increase in activity," said Mark Dente, MD, Chief Medical Informatics Officer, GE Healthcare IT. "It's really around our ability to help providers meet the criteria for 'meaningful use' and how we think we can contribute to that effort."

"Meaningful use" is the standard for eligibility that practitioners must meet for federal stimulus funds, and that definition has been proposed but is not final.

"No one really knows what the final 'meaningful use' definitions will be but we've put programs in place to help mitigate that concern for our customers," Dr. Dente said. He characterized the promise of health information adoption to favorably impact care.

"It centers around our ability to provide solutions that have interoperability ... and how we're going to connect this information to help drive the concept of the medical home for that patient's information. Then really, how do we bring what we do best--our innovation around clinical decision support-to help drive best practices and care models?"

At HIMSS10, this week's trade show devoted to health IT, GE will showcase its clinical knowledge platform, developed alongside the Mayo Clinic and Intermountain Healthcare, two esteemed organizations known for driving quality of care. (See DM 11802.)

Meanwhile, back in Washington, while health care reform is on the front page, some very important background work is going on as regulations surrounding health information technology are being finalized.

"The standards themselves have been pretty well known," said Mark Segal, PhD, Director of Government and Industry Affairs, GE Healthcare IT. He noted that an interim final rule for 'meaningful use' was promulgated in late December (see DM 11181). In addition to the 'meaningful use' standard, which health care providers must demonstrate, health IT vendors need to meet certification criteria.

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