GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
October 21, 2009 | Length: 00:04:59
At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt introduces a handheld ultrasound gadget called Vscan. Immelt believes that the new device will be make it easier for clinicians to monitor the human body in a variety of settings, including countries where medical professionals cannot afford larger imaging systems. Immelt also reveals new electronic medical-records software on which the company is working.
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RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
tried to paste the link on Firefox too without any better results.
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
2nd Use working ways to pass info to us (check jeffreyjoy@ post)
3rd Respect our time
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
high definition.
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
be to use, the higher the experience and theoretical knowledge of the user
has to be in order to avoid the multitude of physical, technical, biological
and interpretative artifacts all devices may generate in their usage and the
mistakes that stem from those. Thus it is unlikely that an implement as
described will ?make it easier for clinicians to monitor the human body ... ,
including countries where medical professionals cannot afford larger
imaging systems? since clinicians in such countries lack the means to
reach a necessary level of experience in the first place. Putting such devices
in the hands of medical professional with limited capability in that segment
will just create an illusion something is achieved while generating a host of
superficial results that, ultimately, might generate a disillusionment with an
otherwise splendid implement. A parallel: nobody can become a good
laparoscopic surgeon without becoming a quality ?open air? surgeon first.
The best use of such aides is in the hands of experts with several years of
practice on standard (preferably high-end) machines.
What about the little guy?
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
What is the projected cost of the unit and how suitable really is it for the developing world, when you consider that the levels of IT support are often very primative, especially in the Pacific Islands which are the areas that I am interested in. Fantastic concept though and I am sure that this and other innovations will really start to make a diffence in countiris like Papua new Guinea.
In response to the previous commentator, the venture capitalists are only interested in one thing- how they are going to make money out of your idea. Of course they will not go up against the big boys- this is why technology really cannot reach its full potential as an agent of change.
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
2. The computer info is best if it can be used portablyby a doctor in the field, I think - on a portable computer slate w/keyboard? Super Blackberry? Tricorder, anyone? It won't be long.
RE: GE: 'Stethoscope for the 21st century'
Transcript
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Speaker: You have a very thriving health care business, and you want to show us something that's never been shown before, so let's see it.
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Speaker: So I have two things here today. You know, we've got about a 17 or 18 billion dollar health care business. We're big into diagnostics. And the big thing we've tried to drive inside the company is to look at health care like a big systems problem. So we're really focused on, you know, cost, quality, and access as being the big drivers. So the first one is a product we're gonna introduce next year called the "Vscan." And this has to do with access. This is an ultrasound that is basically the same size as my BlackBerry. And this has the same power, right, that a ultrasound would have maybe two or three years ago that would cost 250,000 bucks. This now has the same image quality and access. This is actually a liver that you're seeing on this screen. Now, you know, we're gonna put this out and get it in clinicians' hands. You know, this really could be the stethoscope of the twenty-first century because you're gonna be able to really monitor what's going on in the heart. You're gonna be able to monitor what's going on inside the human body. You can picture these going to Africa, India, places like that where you can see whether a baby is breach or not, you know, so that -- the health of the mother is at stake. So this, again, just shows the power of -- you know, this is Moore's Law right, in action and it shows where it was. I joined our health care business in 1995. Typically one of the things that I talk about are weight. To get this imaging scale -- you know, in 1995 when I joined the business, you had a product that weighed several hundred pounds. Right? So it just shows what can happen in health care and access. The second thing is we've got what we call -- it's clinical data support that I think --
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Speaker: So can we bring it up? I think we --
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Speaker: --We have on a screen. So --
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Speaker: Yeah, there you go.
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Speaker: So this is -- everybody's heard of electronic medical record, and I want to do this because it's in keeping with web 2.0, really web squared. So electronic medical record -- you've all heard of it. This basically -- picture a -- this is the hospital in Columbia, Missouri, or something like that, a couple hundred bed hospital. You know, electronic medical records aren't gonna save health care, right? You know, in other words just taking patients records and putting them online doesn't do that much. I think -- the thing to think about health care is that 80 percent of the health care dollars are spent by doctors. 65 percent of the health care dollars are on chronic disease, right? And that the real foundation, right, is that by the time something goes from a medical best practice to a standard of care is, like, 17 years. So disseminating information into clinical decision-making is really what it's all about. So this basically - your first screen is just a, you know, this is a product we have that's called E-Sys, which is advanced, you know, clinical information system. This just shows patients in a hospital setting with alerts that are going on, and basically this is a collaboration between GE., Intermountain Health Care, which has got the lowest cost and highest quality in the US, and Mayo Clinic, which you've all heard about. And so the idea is to really put, against all these patients, what this right standards of care would be. If you go to the next screen, so this just drills down one step further on the next screen, which shows who are all the cardiac patients. So we could bring that up.
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Speaker: Looks like the Internets are down.
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Speaker: Looks like -- looks like we don't have enough broadband? Did you -- did you talk to Brian --
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Speaker: I think -- I think Brian might --
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Speaker: Did you talk to Brian about that?
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Speaker: I think he might be asking for too much on NBC, and Brian's a little ticked off.
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Speaker: And so we have a cardiac -- what we basically do is go for -- go down a cardiac patients, right? Oops. And then the -- let's see if we could get -- there we go.
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Speaker: Hopefully that will work. There we go.
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Speaker: So this is all the patients -- so these are all the patients that really walked in with either acute cardiac or have chronic cardiac disease. And then if you go one more to James Small assumed spelling. So this is a guy that walked in with chest pains and basically by the time this guy -- if you look across the top of the screen, this is all the stuff that's done with -- at Mayo Clinic that a hospital can have anywhere in the country about how you treat acute cardiac disease when a patient walks in the hospital. So the idea is that this can go on top of any electronic medical record in the country, and this is the way you really lower health care costs ultimately.
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