General Electric Co. plans to create a “healthy work site” certification program recognizing businesses that offer effective employee health programs, part of a far-reaching initiative dubbed Healthymagination.
Vice Chairman John Rice will lead GE”™s efforts to create a “culture” of health at GE, which will include banning smoking at all facilities. GE also plans to provide personal health records to employees to help them identify their health risks and track their behavior.
The certificate program represents a tiny part of the initiative, in which Fairfield-based GE plans to spend $3 billion over the next six years on health-care advances that it promises will improve care and lower costs by at least 15 percent.
The company plans to launch between 50 and 100 products by 2015 that couple significant technology capabilities with simple operation, tailored for areas where access to health care technology is limited. GE hired a consulting firm in the United Kingdom to gauge its progress, which found seven GE products that meet the 15 percent standard and 20 more products in the pipeline that could clear the threshold.
As an example, GE points to its Venue 40 bedside ultrasound machine, which it says costs 20 percent less than other low-cost ultrasound machines while delivering 15 percent better image quality.
The company promised to commit another $3 billion to drive health care information technology into rural areas and others that are currently underserved, through financing commitments and technology. Of that amount, Norwalk-based GE Capital will provide $2 billion in financing to help hospitals and clinics in rural areas adopt electronic medical records and online health information exchanges before 2011, meeting a deadline to qualify for federal financial incentives.
Besides GE Capital and GE Healthcare in the United Kingdom, Healthymagination will span:
New York City-based NBC Universal;
Trevose, Pa.-based GE Water, which is part of GE Energy;
the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, N.Y.; and
the GE Foundation in Fairfield.
The Healthymagination tagline echoes GE”™s Ecomagination effort, which has been the centerpiece of the company”™s alternative energy technologies such as wind power and water systems. GE Water is also considered a formal contributor to Healthymagination, and it is clear there will be other cross-over products ”“ for instance, in March GE Healthcare announced a digital X-ray machine would be included in Ecomagination, for its ability to help eliminate the use of chemicals in printing traditional X-ray images.
The Healthymagination initiative comes less than a year after the company announced a consolidation that eliminated GE Healthcare as one of six standalone divisions, folding it under GE Technology Infrastructure. A year ago this month, the Food and Drug Administration allowed GE to open a Salt Lake City factory that makes robotic surgical arms, after shutting down the facility in January 2007 over factory process concerns.
In the first quarter, GE Healthcare had a $411 million operating profit on $3.5 billion in revenue, with sales off 9 percent from a year ago.
For GE CEO Jeff Immelt, the initiative marks a return to prominence within GE of an industry he knows well ”“ before replacing Jack Welch as CEO in 2001, Immelt led GE”™s medical device division.
“This reflects the new opportunities we see in health care,” Immelt said, in a prepared statement. “With our technology, rural and urban areas and developing countries can have access to the best technology ”“ affordably. We saw the same type of tipping point four years ago when we launched ”¦ Ecomagination.”
