GE Healthcare announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver AI and cloud-based imaging solutions, integrated data, and clinical and operational insights to hospitals and healthcare providers. GE Healthcare plans to offer its AI-based imaging applications and Edison Health Services platform on AWS, a move that positions the company to lead the way in helping to transition healthcare providers globally from the traditional care delivery model provided in the hospital setting to a more decentralized model that is virtual and distributed. This trend was accelerated by the pandemic, and the transformation is enabled by the cloud.
 
An overwhelming majority of physicians say that access to the right data at the right time will help them improve care.¹ Currently, hospitals perform 3.6 billion imaging procedures and produce 50 petabytes of data a year worldwide (97 percent of that goes unused). Clinicians need analytics that help generate clinical, operational, and financial insights providing them with a more holistic view of the patient to further support precision health. GE Healthcare’s Edison Health Services platform will give hospital customers the ability to integrate and assimilate significant amounts of data from disparate sources using the cloud with an aim toward increasing clinical efficiency and productivity and helping clinicians improve patient care.
 
“As the world moves towards a more virtualized and distributed care delivery model with home care, remote patient management, and increased use of AI, radiologists and other clinicians need easy access to data that is seamlessly integrated, aggregated, and visualized in applications and services across modalities and within their existing workflows,” said Amit Phadnis, Chief Digital Officer at GE Healthcare. “By doing this at scale, we are helping to drive clinical outcomes and achieving our goals of transforming healthcare to be more efficient and personalized.”
 
GE Healthcare aims to help providers scale their ability to securely and compliantly aggregate all healthcare data types and formats to extract insights, while providing easier access to regulatory cleared AI algorithms and applications by integrating them into existing workflows—breaking down data silos and supporting healthcare providers in their pursuit of delivering the best care possible.
 
“This is an exciting opportunity to combine the forces of GE Healthcare and AWS to help customers improve patient care. Hosting patient data in proven applications, coupled with advanced analytics and AI, leveraging the most secure, reliable and agile cloud, will enable care givers to deliver better and more personalized experiences for their patients,” said Dr. Rowland Illing, Director, International Public Sector Health at AWS.
 
The first AI-enabled imaging solution to be available on the AWS offering from this collaboration is GE Healthcare’s Edison TruePACS,² Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS). This medical imaging storage system provides hospitals with an AI-enabled, diagnostic imaging cloud solution, and a low cost, secure alternative to help improve access to care and deliver clinical insights.
 
In addition, GE Healthcare will offer its Edison data aggregation and AI analytics platform on AWS to help developers access the platform, making it easier to build, test, and validate new AI models, while facilitating the adoption of novel applications into clinical workflows. The company also plans to make additional products within its imaging portfolio available on AWS including AI-based advanced image processing applications that radiologists use.
 
Upgrading PACS systems has traditionally been a slow and expensive undertaking for hospitals and imaging centers. Leveraging a cloud-based PACS solution will reduce the need for complicated and lengthy PACS upgrades in the future and help to ensure that radiologists always have the latest tools to benefit their patients while ultimately lowering the total cost of ownership, and keeping pace with the growing workloads and complexity that occurs within the hospital.
 
“By allowing GE Healthcare and AWS to handle the backups and duplication of the data, we can reduce our backup workload on site while knowing our data is secure,” said Richard Duemmling, Chief of Business Operations at Neuro Imaging in Winter Park, Fla. “From our perspective, this presents an opportunity for significant savings by eliminating the costs associated with onsite hosting and data storage.”
 
GE Healthcare will enable hospitals and imaging centers to adopt cloud and hybrid (cloud and on-premises) implementations, thereby offering full deployment flexibility as healthcare providers accelerate their journey to the cloud.
 
With more than 200 digital and image-based applications, GE Healthcare is a leading vendor of AI-enabled medical imaging applications worldwide.³ The company manages over four million devices and creates more than two billion scans each year.
 
References
¹ https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/google-cloud-study-finds-overwhelming-physician-support-interoperability-efforts
² Edison True PACS solution on AWS is currently only available in the United States
³ Signify Research LTD, Machine Learning in Medical Imaging World Market Analysis, June 5, 2020