Realizing a vision to deliver the best care to patients close to where they live in northern Ohio, GE HealthCare and University Hospitals (UH) today announced a 10-year strategic collaboration to bring GE HealthCare technologies to UH across its radiology practice and UH Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute, providing contemporary equipment and digital solutions to improve processes for the benefit of patients and clinicians.

The agreement includes hundreds of new systems, including AI-enabled technologies, across nuclear medicine, X-Ray, vascular and cardiovascular ultrasound, regional CT, fluoroscopy, surgery, and bone densitometry for which GE HealthCare will be the sole provider. A focus of the collaboration is to implement enterprise-wide technology to optimize workflows and help improve clinical decision-making.

“Driven by a mission to heal, to teach, and to discover, University Hospitals offers access to quality care for everyone in Northeast Ohio,” says UH Chief Operating Officer Paul Hinchey, MD, MBA. “GE HealthCare’s solutions across the diagnostic spectrum and ongoing pursuit of system optimization and patient care efficiencies will help us improve the patient experience and their overall health.”

As highlighted in GE HealthCare’s recent Reimagining Better Health Study, the healthcare industry faces challenges including clinician burnout and labor shortages. These issues underscore the need for more efficient workflows and a real-time decision-making solution to optimize hospital operations and patient care. [i]

GE HealthCare and UH aim to address these challenges with:

• An AI and machine learning enabled technology fleet to help provide high image quality and to help enable faster scan times, clinical versatility, and enhanced diagnostics capabilities for healthcare professionals. These tools and automated workflows are designed to help provide consistency, speed, clarity, and productivity for operational efficiency.
• Ongoing attention to contemporizing technology over the course of the agreement with GE HealthCare's Smart Subscription – a service that updates AI and software to help extend the life of the imaging fleet – to help increase throughput and maximize equipment performance and uptime.
• Standardization and automated protocols across CT devices to help improve workflow, increase utilization and reduce the downtime associated with managing the fleet. This transformational approach will help UH keep pace with clinical and workflow innovations over time, regardless of location.
• Ongoing education and training for technologists, students, and physicians that will meet the ever-evolving needs of clinicians.
• A digital Command Center solution that leverages technology and insights at the enterprise-level through a cloud-based digital hub for UH’s radiology department. The solution is intended to streamline daily management across network hospitals to create visibility into scheduling and authentication issues, improve inpatient coordination, decrease downtime associated with fleet maintenance, and reduce radiology-related patient excess days in the hospital.

“As hospital systems look for opportunities to increase clinical and operational efficiencies while improving quality of care and patient outcomes, advanced technologies and digital solutions are key enablers,” says Catherine Estrampes, president and CEO, GE HealthCare in U.S. and Canada. “GE HealthCare is uniquely positioned to partner with University Hospitals to advance the scope, quality, and efficiency of patient care and clinician workflows in northern Ohio as they use their scale to focus on providing the highest quality of care in every facility in their community, aligned with their local mindset.”