July 1, 2009 – GE Healthcare and InterComponentWare Inc. (ICW), announced that the companies have signed a strategic agreement to integrate and co-develop their health information exchange (HIE) solutions.
Through this relationship, GE Healthcare and ICW will leverage their existing solutions and co-develop new offerings for the health information exchange and global eHealth marketplace. Using ICW’s expertise in patient connectivity, GE Healthcare will enhance Centricity Health Information Exchange service’s existing technology, patient connectivity and communications tools while further bolstering their security and interoperability capabilities.
“Connectivity is one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today and it directly impacts the quality and cost of patient care,” said Vishal Wanchoo, President and Chief Executive Officer of GE Healthcare IT. “Our strategic relationship with ICW enables GE Healthcare to accelerate our Centricity connectivity solutions and further extend our global capabilities. With our Centricity portfolio of electronic medical records, enterprise systems, clinical repositories and patient solutions, GE Healthcare is now one of the only companies to offer the full range of technology needs for global healthcare IT.”
Centricity Health Information Exchange services connects, stores and shares clinical data from hospitals, physician offices, pharmacies, labs and other sources to help improve communication flow between care providers and patients and clinicians. The resulting network enables state, government or healthcare delivery organizations to create a secure exchange to share patient conditions, allergies, medication history and other appropriate clinical data across the continuum of care.
ICW brings more than 10 years of intensive research and development of state-of-the-art solutions for electronic health information interoperability. The company’s eHealth Infrastructure is in use globally with the Austrian National Health System, the German Federal Ministry for Health and Social Security’s bIT4health consortium, the eHC in Bulgaria and others. This global breadth complements GE Healthcare’s HIE solutions that are installed at customer sites in Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Oregon.
For more information: www.icw-global.com and www.gehealthcare.com
