GE Healthcare Works to Speed Up Fight Against Cancer

GE Healthcare’s work to accelerate cancer innovation and improve care for cancer patients reached new milestones in advanced technology.

The campaign is founded on GE Healthcare’s integrated portfolio, which is uniquely positioned to drive impact in oncology and a leap forward for individualized cancer care. GE Healthcare launched a series of new oncology technologies and systems to help advance cancer diagnostic and molecular imaging in 2012.

“At GE, we are committed to the ongoing fight against cancer, the leading cause of death worldwide,” said John Dineen, president and CEO, GE Healthcare. “I’m proud of the investment and innovations that we’ve made over the past year and look forward to working with our customers and partners to develop new technologies and oncology solutions. We fully support World Cancer Day on 4 February to highlight the determination of the international community to fight cancer.”

New Technologies to Help Improve Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment

FlightPlan for Liver Cancer Liver cancer is the fifth most common cancer in men (523,000 cases p/y) and the seventh in women (226,000 cases p/y). To help physicians accurately identify vessels and block the blood supply to the tumor (liver embolization), a standard palliative treatment for liver cancer, GE Healthcare received U.S. FDA clearance in late 2012 for its advanced imaging tool, FlightPlan for Liver. With FlightPlan for Liver, available worldwide, physicians can gain confidence in identifying tumor-feeding vessels and be more selective when planning liver embolization.

MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound Therapy for Bone Pain Palliation In October 2012, the U.S. FDA approved Insightec’s ExAblate MRI-guided focused ultrasound for treatment of painful bone metastases in patients who are not candidates for or refuse to undergo radiation treatment. InSightec’s ExAblate system is exclusively compatible with GE Healthcare’s normal and wide bore systems. It combines therapeutic acoustic ultrasound waves with continuous guidance and treatment monitoring by MRI. This unique combination of technologies is called Magnetic Resonance guided Focused Ultrasound Therapy (MRgFUS). Physicians use MRI to plan and guide therapy and monitor treatment outcome. Focused ultrasound acoustic energy destroys nerves causing pain from bone metastases, resulting in rapid pain reduction. GE Healthcare is a minority shareholder of InSightec, Ltd., and is a distributor of ExAblate in many countries around the world.

GE Healthcare Acquires U-Systems, IncGE Healthcare’s acquisition of a unique automated breast ultrasound imaging technology positions the company with a large portfolio of breast imaging solutions. The automated breast ultrasound system (ABUS) is a powerful tool that can help physicians find mammographically occult cancers hiding in dense breast tissue. According to published industry reports, over 40% of women in the U.S. with dense breast tissue are more likely to get breast cancer than those without dense breast tissue. Recent studies have demonstrated with the addition of ABUS that radiologists have found about 30 percent more cancers in women who have a normal mammogram, normal physical examination and dense breasts.

Increasing patient comfort for mammography screenings Healthcare is personal – particularly for women undergoing mammograms. Designed to divert a women’s attention away from the discomfort associated with mammography screenings, SensorySuite from GE Healthcare, now commercially available, provides a customized environment involving sight, smell and hearing during an examination. Around 25% of women avoid mammograms because of worry and fear. SensorySuite now provides a blend of interactive tools, selected decorative wall panels, with associated sounds and fragrances to distract the patient from a potentially stressful examination.

PET/CT in the fight against cancer GE Healthcare has launched new technologies in their ‘Q Suite’, enabling clinicians to minimize the impact and quickly address movement during a PET/CT scan, including thorax movement while the patient is breathing. These technologies help give clinicians diagnostic confidence while helping to minimize exposure to dose.

Continued Development of Omnyx Integrated Digital Pathology

With a combined $100M+ investment, Omnyx is a joint venture of GE Healthcare and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), formed out of a vision to bring pathology into the digital age and improve the research performance of pathology departments worldwide. By combining the technology innovation and backing of GE Healthcare with the pathology expertise and insight of UPMC, Omnyx is developing an Integrated Digital Pathology Solution. Designed to integrate the pathology department from image scanning and case preparation to case review, the Omnyx solution will digitize pathology and raise the performance standard for digital pathology research solutions. Omnyx Integrated Digital Pathology (IDP) is the result of extensive collaborations with more than 30 thought leading pathologists from 13 academic medical centers and research laboratories around the globe.

Omnyx® products are for research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

Cancer Awareness and Support through Social Media

GE Healthcare runs a number of successful global campaigns on social media that allow people from all over the world to share their story, show their support to those whose lives are affected by cancer and spread the word on the importance of early diagnosis. The Company has been recognized with external industry awards for its #GetFit campaign, a worldwide competition on multiple social media platforms to raise public awareness about cancer prevention. Find out more about #GetFit and other cancer awareness initiatives here.