NEW ORLEANS - GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), participated in the 2007 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans, unveiling breakthrough efforts to seamlessly connect clinicians across the healthcare continuum-from the origination of treatment to its successful completion and from revenue cycle acceleration to clinical workflow optimization.

"In today's healthcare environments, an IT solution needs to provide more than paperless and filmless workflow," said Vishal Wanchoo, president and CEO for GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions. "Today's healthcare IT needs to facilitate collaboration across the entire continuum of care-to help improve patient safety, increase efficiency and enhance the quality of patient care."

One year after the acquisition of IDX, the new GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions business has successfully integrated the two companies under the Centricity product portfolio, which now includes a broad suite of clinical, financial and administrative solutions.
Demonstrating a simulated healthcare network, the Centricity Continuum of Care pavilion will provide a glimpse into the patient experience showcasing how Centricity infuses information and knowledge into the care process to support clinicians in providing safer more cost effective care.

Technologies highlighted during this cross-continuum journey include:

- Centricity Enterprise Solution, an integrated clinical, financial and administrative solution that captures, organizes and presents relevant information to the right person at the right time.

- Centricity Electronic Medical Records, a CCHIT certified electronic medical record system that enables ambulatory care physicians and clinical staff to document patient encounters, streamline clinical workflow and securely exchange clinical data with other providers.

- Centricity Business, which improves and accelerates the revenue cycle from the first point of patient contact to final payment for services with robust financial and administrative capabilities that result in fewer denials, foster payments and a decreased cost of collections.

Demonstrations included a new healthcare specific tablet developed jointly by Intel and Motion Computing. The Motion C5 provides a lightweight, spill- and drop-tolerant, and easily disinfected point-of-care device that allows nurses to access patient records and enhancing patient care while reducing the administrative workload of the clinical staff.

Through its leadership participation in Integrating the Health Enterprise (IHE), GE is again demonstrating industry leading products that provide seamless health information exchange among care providers. The new standards-based interoperability effort will help deliver on the vision for providing secure exchange of healthcare information among patients and caregivers as part of a Nation-wide Health Information Network. GE Healthcare is a leadership sponsor of this year's showcase and has actively championed IHE since its creation nine years ago.

"Our efforts throughout this year's HIMSS show demonstrate our unique ability to help inform and enhance practitioners' abilities to visualize, access and act--more aggressively, more efficiently, more effectively," said Wanchoo. "Together with the depth and breadth of the entire GE Healthcare portfolio, GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions is a critical component to transforming the entire healthcare system."

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