“The power of AI lies in its ability to support decision-making.”
That’s how Keith Bigelow, GE Healthcare’s senior vice president of Analytics & AI, recently summed up the significance of the technologies his organization will be rolling out on theHIMSS19 show floor when the Global Conference kicks off in February.
“The GE Healthcare vision for precision health features several components,” Bigelow explained, “including precision diagnostics, or how to make the right decision for the patient; precision therapeutics, or how to perform precise treatments; and precision monitoring, or how to help the patient stay well and determine what happens next.
GE projects that the AI market in healthcare will grow to more than $6.5 billion by 2021, and that nearly 40 percent of healthcare decision makers are planning to invest in machine learning and predictive analytics for imaging and other clinical applications.
With that growth in mind, Bigelow said that GE Healthcare will be showing apps and smart devices built using its Edison intelligence platform, including AI algorithms embedded into medical devices for use cases both clinical, financial and operational in nature.
“In our innovation area, we’ll be highlighting critical care solutions in a hospital setting,” Bigelow said.
The company is also looking to establish an ecosystem of third-party developers building for its platform. Apps that have already been announced include AIRx, an automated workflow tool for MRI brain scanning, and Critical Care Suite to help identify pneumothorax at the point-of-care.
“Healthcare is on a journey to precision health -- delivering the right outcome, for the right patient, at exactly the right point of care,” Bigelow said. “To execute on that, our industry needs to focus on driving out cost, increasing access to care, increasing the quality of care, and improving the patient experience.”
GE said that imaging generates some 90 percent of healthcare data but just 3 percent of that information gets analyzed and used by hospitals to improve operations or outcomes. Changing that, and putting data to work, is a major step in the overarching industry movement toward precision health, otherwise known as precision medicine or even personalized health.