News

GE Healthcare Collaborates with AWS To Deliver AI and Cloud-Based Imaging Apps

• By John K. Waters
• 08/09/2021

GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of General Electric Co., on Monday announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based imaging solutions, integrated data, and clinical and operational "insights" to hospitals and health care providers.

With this collaboration, GE Healthcare aims to help health care providers "scale their ability to securely and compliantly aggregate all healthcare data types and formats to extract insights." It will make it easier for those providers to access "regulatory cleared" AI algorithms and applications by integrating them into existing workflows, breaking down data silos, the company said in a statement.

The company said it will enable hospitals and imaging centers to adopt cloud and hybrid implementations, offering full deployment flexibility as health care providers accelerate their move to the cloud.

The first AI-enabled imaging solution to be delivered on AWS is GE Healthcare's Edison TruePACS (PACS stands for Picture Archive and Communication System). This solution is a medical imaging storage system that provides hospitals with an AI-enabled diagnostic imaging cloud solution.

GE Healthcare also plans to offer its Edison data aggregation and AI analytics platform on AWS to give developers access to the platform. This access makes it easier to build, test and validate new AI models, while facilitating the adoption of novel applications into clinical workflows, the company says. GE Healthcare plans to make "additional products within its imaging portfolio" available on AWS, including AI-based advanced image processing applications that radiologists use.

According to GE Healthcare, hospitals currently perform 3.6 billion imaging procedures and produce 50 petabytes of data per year worldwide, 97 percent of which goes unused. Clinicians need a holistic view of the patient that includes analytics that help generate clinical, operational and financial insights, providing them with 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, explained Amit Phadnis, Chief Digital Officer at GE Healthcare, in a statement.

"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," Phadnis said. "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."