22 Nov GE Healthcare wins $200m slice of England’s digital health-care plan
Milwaukee — GE Healthcare will provide digital imaging systems to the English government to power its electronic health-care initiative, the company announced on Monday.
England’s National Health Service wants to install systems nationwide to allow medical images to be transmitted among hospitals so that experts can look at them on demand. It will spend about $18 billion. The deal with GE Healthcare is valued around $200 million.
GE Healthcare is based in the United Kingdom, but Milwaukee-headquartered GE Healthcare Technologies is developing the systems, spokesperson Andrea Kozek said.
“GE is providing Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) as the main element of this project,” she said. “This technology allows physicians to quickly display medical images and provide diagnosis based upon review of these images, using an all electronic means with no film. Additionally, GE will be providing the implementation services and support for these systems for the term of the agreement.”
GE’s contract covers the southern region of England, which will include about a third of the total PACS, the company said.
Fujitsu Services, out of Japan, is the service provider for the region under England’s health plan. Fujitsu chose GE for the contract and said the systems would be in place by March 2007.
The size of the contract is likely to mean added jobs in both GE’s U.S.-based organization and its local operation in England, Kozek said.
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Jason Stitt is WTN’s associate editor and can be reached at jason@wistechnology.com.