![“To bring innovation and the agile approaches of smaller [information technology] companies to healthcare, you need to hide the complexities of the healthcare stack,” says Dr. Felix Nensa (top). “Edison Digital Health Platform does exactly that.” Image credits: Dr. Felix Nensa, GE Healthcare](/sites/default/files/styles/content_large/public/Edison.jpeg?itok=fybUrVmw)
“To bring innovation and the agile approaches of smaller [information technology] companies to healthcare, you need to hide the complexities of the healthcare stack,” says Dr. Felix Nensa (top). “Edison Digital Health Platform does exactly that.” Image credits: Dr. Felix Nensa, GE Healthcare
March 24, 2022 — At HIMSS22, GE Healthcare announced its intention to introduce Edison Digital Health Platform, a vendor-agnostic hosting and data aggregation platform with an integrated artificial intelligence (AI) engine. The platform is being developed to enable hospitals and healthcare systems to effectively deploy the clinical, workflow, analytics and AI tools which would support the improvement of care delivery, the promotion of high-efficiency operations, and the increase of revenue growth, while also supporting reduction in the IT burden that typically comes with installing and integrating apps across the enterprise.
Edison Digital Health Platform is designed to accelerate app integration by connecting devices and other data sources into an aggregated clinical data layer. A collection of data transformation services is expected to be available on the platform to support data analytic applications, and to enable the training and deployment of AI models using the aggregated data. Through open and published interfaces, healthcare providers and third-party developers are expected to be able to seamlessly deploy their applications, with the platform supporting integration of the apps into existing workflows. In addition, GE Healthcare intends to integrate and deploy its own apps such as Command Center “tiles” onto Edison Digital Health Platform.
“Edison Digital Health Platform is being designed to enable healthcare systems to have a single platform on which to host and integrate apps into clinical workflows,” said Amit Phadnis, Chief Digital Officer, GE Healthcare. “With easy access to the workflow, analytics, and clinical apps specific to care across the care continuum, clinicians will have actionable insights at their fingertips to help better serve their patients.”
With Edison Digital Health Platform, IT departments are intended to benefit from a one-time connection to multiple databases, such as the EMR, during the first integration, after which subsequent apps are expected to connect with less effort. With a vendor-agnostic platform, providers would be able to select best-in-class and preferred apps safely and securely, without the typical requirement of multiple individual integrations or being locked into a single vendor. In addition, the platform is being designed to scale across cloud, server, data center or on-device deployment. Leidos, a preferred premier systems integrator and GE Healthcare Strategic Alliance member, will collaborate with customers on seamless implementations and appropriate integrations.
“We look forward to working alongside GE Healthcare to address health systems’ technology challenges from the growing demand for app integration,” said Liz Porter, president of Leidos Health Group. “The platform will help reduce digital friction across the enterprise and accelerate the deployment of digital solutions at scale. This will help healthcare providers improve efficiency and drive better care for patients.”
According to Gartner, “the DHP (digital health platform) shift will emerge as the most cost-effective and technically efficient way to scale new digital capabilities within and across health ecosystems and will over time replace the monolithic era of the megasuite electronic health record (EHR).” [ii]
“We expect Edison Digital Health Platform to be a game-changer for clinicians, particularly as it relates to patient data,” said Dr. Felix Nensa, a consultant radiologist at the University Hospital Essen and group leader at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. “They will have the ability to have all of their patients’ data indexed and aggregated in one place, saving hours of time by reducing the need to search across various, disparate systems to access relevant patient information.”
For more information: www.gehealthcare.com
[i] [i][i] Gartner, “Market Guide for Digital Health Platforms for Healthcare Providers” October 2021. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
March 14, 2023 
