GE HealthCare Inks Research and Strategic Partnerships with Two California Health Systems

GE HealthCare announced alliances with two major California health systems to address accessibility to advanced imaging, artificial intelligence (AI) and precision care.

With the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, GE HealthCare announced the launch of a Care Innovation Hub, a joint research collaboration that aims to address meaningful clinical challenges in three key areas: accessibility to advanced medical imaging, non-invasive diagnosis and management of neurological and neurodegenerative disease, and precision oncology. The Care Innovation Hub leverages the strengths of academia and industry to create, evaluate and translate novel technology into a clinical setting with the goals of advancing diagnosis and treatment of disease, improving hospital operations and driving more equitable access to care.  

The Care Innovation Hub builds on a decades-long history between UCSF and GE HealthCare, bringing research focus areas under one framework. It integrates the research and clinical expertise of UCSF in critical care areas such as brain health, neurodegenerative disease and oncology, with GE HealthCare’s deep knowledge in research and product development.

“Our collaboration with GE HealthCare brings a practical focus on addressing well-defined clinical objectives,” said Sharmila Majumdar, PhD, Research Vice Chair in the UCSF Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging. “Together, we’re accelerating innovation in ways that will improve access to care and outcomes across healthcare settings.”

The Care Innovation Hub centers on three focus areas designed to address impactful clinical goals and answer critical questions in the field of medical imaging and treatment:

• Building an imaging service line of the future 
• Advancing solutions for neurodegenerative disease 
• Driving Accessible Precision Oncology 

UCSF and GE HealthCare aim to dramatically improve medical imaging services by developing more automated imaging methods, such as patient-specific magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques that could adapt to patient needs in real time. This aims to increase efficiency and accessibility to create more consistent, high quality, and personalized care. Projects within this focus area concentrate on advancing quantitative imaging for cardiac and musculoskeletal disease and developing methods to enable high-quality remote scanning. 

UCSF and GE HealthCare will work to expand understanding of brain functions using advanced imaging. The team aims to explore the links between white matter injury, vascular disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, and identify ways to predict treatment efficacy for brain health interventions.

UCSF and GE HealthCare hope to develop quantitative imaging methods to monitor patient response to radiopharmaceutical therapies (RPTs) and create protocols to expand access to these emerging treatments. The team aims to standardize processes for new approaches, such as visualization of alpha-emitting radiopharmaceuticals.

 

 

The seven-year strategic enterprise partnership, known as a Care Alliance, with Sutter Health aims to increase access to innovative imaging services and create a more seamless and coordinated experience for clinicians and patients across the Sutter Health system. The long-term collaboration will increase access to essential diagnostic care across California, providing patients with advanced technology in their own communities that can help enable quicker appointment scheduling, accelerated diagnostic imaging scan results, early diagnoses, greater convenience, and more consistent and timely care. This Care Alliance marks one of GE HealthCare's largest ever enterprise strategic partnerships.

For Sutter, this alliance will help achieve faster access to novel equipment and technology solutions, as well as provide an innovative service delivery model with enhanced, reliable equipment availability. It is grounded in key goals, including expanded access to care, improved patient experience, more consistency regardless of care location, increased patient capacity, greater system integration and interoperability, and a timely refresh of needed equipment. It centers on several areas of collaboration, including optimized technology, an innovative service delivery model, advancing service line care at destination centers of excellence and digital integration.

“This strategic partnership is rooted in our commitment to providing innovative, high-caliber care to our 3.5 million patients across Northern California and the Central Coast,” said Warner Thomas, president and CEO of Sutter Health. “We’re responding to what we’ve heard from our physicians and making comprehensive upgrades with the latest technology to boost our capacity and expand access points. This collaboration ensures that no matter where patients enter the Sutter Health system, they’ll receive seamless and coordinated care.”

The first key focus area of the Care Alliance is an accelerated technology program across the Sutter Health system that will focus on some of the most advanced AI-powered imaging technology and digital solutions available to patients, including PET/CT, SPECT/CT, MRI, CT, X-ray, nuclear medicine and ultrasound. GE HealthCare’s interventional, mammography, diagnostic cardiology, maternal and infant care and anesthesia solutions will also be included in Sutter Health’s ambulatory care centers, helping to address the growing need for care outside of the traditional hospital setting. This comprehensive technology refresh covers the breadth of GE HealthCare’s portfolio of solutions, providing clinicians with innovative options to meet changing patient needs more efficiently and quickly.