HIMSS 2022: GE Healthcare digs into digital health with platform launch, remote cardiac monitoring partnership

ORLANDO, Florida—Ahead of its spinoff from General Electric, GE Healthcare is digging into digital health with the launch of its new Edison platform for healthcare organizations.

The Edison Digital Health Platform, announced Tuesday at this year’s Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Conference in Orlando, Florida, aggregates applications and patient data from multiple sources and integrates them with existing clinical workflows for easy provider access, according to the company.

The platform also includes a “cohort manager” tool to allow providers to query a wealth of data and draw outpatient cohorts for analytics.

Ken Denison, Ph.D., vice president of digital platform and product marketing, told Fierce Healthcare that taking advantage of the many applications on the market typically requires contracting with vendors for each of those apps, a time-consuming and complicated process that’s also a security risk for health systems in exposing patient data through so many channels.

“The digital health platform aims to bring the flexibility of hundreds of apps but with the simplicity of working with one vendor,” he said. 

He likened the platform to a smartphone, similarly allowing users easy access to multiple apps in one place that are automatically integrated with the tech.

GE Healthcare will also integrate its Command Center software, a suite of tools that helps providers perform tasks in areas like patient management and planning, as apps onto the platform.

“We think (the future of healthcare) is going to be an ecosystem just like your smartphone, and that’s what we’re enabling. We’ll also contribute to the ecosystem, but for the most part, it’ll be third parties who develop,” he said.

The platform currently draws on data from electronic medical record (EMR) systems, labs, imaging, genomics and other sources. Denison admits the integrations have some gaps–they don’t yet include billing data, digital pathology or wearables data–but the company plans to add those pieces in the future.

“We expect Edison Digital Health Platform to be a game-changer for clinicians, particularly as it relates to patient data,” said Felix Nensa, M.D., a consultant radiologist at the University Hospital Essen, in a statement by the company. “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.”

GE Healthcare also announced a partnership this week with AliveCor. The collaboration plans to integrate data from AliveCor’s remote monitoring ECG devices, which record and transmit ECG data directly to a patient’s phone, into GE Healthcare’s MUSE cardiac management system.

AliveCor’s FDA-cleared device allows patients to record their cardiac data, transmit it to their mobile device, and if the app detects any irregularities, providers will receive an alert for the data fed into the EMR.

Tom Pestorius, strategic director of national accounts at GE Healthcare, told Fierce Healthcare the partnership will allow the company to provide a personalized care experience for patients.

“Ultimately, we can reduce hospitalizations, save money, increase the confidence and convenience for the patients, and really strengthen the connection between personal health and clinical decision-making,” he said.

Together, the news of the AliveCor partnership and platform launch previews the company’s intended focus on consumer centricity and centralizing the care experience as it prepares to operate as a standalone business.

In November, GE Healthcare unveiled plans to spin out its healthcare business into a separate public entity by early 2023.

GE has announced to spin off its healthcare segment before, in 2018, with the shift expected in the following year. But the company halted the effort after CEO John Flannery left the company three months later.