Digitization now within 'Reach' of small Indian hospitals and diagnostic centers

GE Healthcare unveiled a
new designed 'In India, for India' low-cost IT solution - GE
Centricity PACS Reach, a picture archiving and communication system
(PACS) aimed at affordably digitizing India's 15,000-plus small
diagnostic centers and hospitals, a market that's traditionally
lower in clinical image volume but is growing at a tremendous pace in
India's tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Centricity PACS Reach endeavors
to bring this market faster image access, greater efficiency and
lower operational costs.

Priced at roughly
one-tenth the cost of comparable imported solutions, Centricity Reach
is a compact, web-deployable, image processing, distribution and
reporting solution, that can be used from within and outside a
healthcare facility. It is the first of its kind simple solution for
low volume diagnostic centers and small private hospitals. Centricity
PACS Reach enables a complete film-less operation
delivering powerful, global standards-based and secure DICOM storage
with image distribution any time, anywhere. It has a fully integrated
rich feature set of image viewing capabilities, seamless navigation,
express reporting and teleradiology support ideally suited for
customers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities and has immense potential to
expedite healthcare IT adoption in India and other emerging
countries.

It is widely accepted that
IT adoption in the Indian healthcare segment has been slow and only a
handful of Indian hospitals or diagnostic centers are IT-enabled
today due to the relative high cost of imported IT solutions.
Centricity PACS Reach is priced at Rs 5 lakh per unit compared to
imported systems that are available upwards of Rs 50 lakh to Rs 10
crore with many features that may be required only for advanced
clinical usage and scale to support high patient procedure volumes.
Centricity Reach is designed and developed at GE's John F Welch
Global Research Centre, Bangalore, specifically to meet India's
unique value requirements.

"IT delivers
information to the heart of healthcare institutions and to the
fingertips of providers and patients seamlessly, anywhere, anytime,”
said Vishal Wanchoo, President and CEO, GE Healthcare IT. He further
added, “We are not strangers here. We understand the challenges
Indian healthcare is facing between disparate clinics, sparse
information sharing, bandwidth challenges and the paperwork barrier. We
are committed to begin changing this through solutions that we
will develop in India, for India, to help expand healthcare's reach
to more people."

70 percent of India's
population continues to live in tier-2, 3 cities and rural areas with
limited access to quality healthcare. Healthcare IT solutions will
help increase patient access and bridge the acute shortage of
well-trained healthcare professionals - like radiologists. With GE
Healthcare's low-cost Centricity PACS Reach systems, healthcare
providers can now expand their reach by creating hub and spoke models
of care, with existing set of trained healthcare professionals.

“IT is the backbone of
any good healthcare system,” said V Raja, President and CEO, GE
Healthcare South Asia. “India, unfortunately, lags behind in this
sector though the country is known for its broad-based IT strengths.
Just as it has helped grow other businesses in India, IT can help
bring affordable healthcare to millions and help the industry grow.”

To reduce the adverse
social and economic impact of rapid growth in incidence of lifestyle
related disease, it is imperative that medical technologies drive
early and affordable diagnosis and therefore earlier treatment. While
GE Healthcare continues to drive down cost on diagnostic equipment
through our 'In India, for India' approach, the company strongly
believes that Healthcare IT will form an integral link, connecting
these systems to radiologists and clinicians while driving greater
access, improved efficiency and productivity.