Rank: #7 (Last year: #7) $19.67 Billion
Prior Fiscal: $19.55 Billion
Percentage Change: +0.6%
R&D Expenditure: $1.31B
Best FY24 Quarter: Q4 $5.31B
Latest Quarter: Q1 $4.78B
No. of Employees: 53,000
Global Headquarters: Chicago, Ill.

Third time’s the charm—for the third year in a row, GE HealthCare has topped the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) list of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled medical devices. The winning number this year was 72 510(k) clearances or authorizations.

The company is heavily investing in AI and machine learning to power precision care—a holistic approach that integrates advanced medical imaging, AI, and molecular diagnostics to tailor diagnosis, treatment, and ongoing monitoring and management. The company is tackling the healthcare industry’s toughest challenges including data overload, physician burnout, and real-time operational efficiency by developing purpose-built solutions powered by AI that enable practitioners to deliver high-quality, precision care.

“We are leveraging our deep industry expertise, and the unique capabilities honed through offering leading medical devices for more than 125 years to create solutions that solve our customers’ biggest challenges,” said Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, chief science and technology officer at GE HealthCare. “GE HealthCare’s continued leadership in AI-based medical device authorizations shows our dedication to deliver groundbreaking technology that transforms healthcare and enhances patient outcomes.”

In addition to leading the pack of AI-enabled medical devices, GE HealthCare also engages in AI collaborations with other companies. In March 2024, the company used NVIDIA AI technology to build the SonoSAMTrack research model, which marries a promptable foundation model for segmenting objects on ultrasound images called SonoSAM. SonoSAMTrack focuses on segmenting anatomies, lesions, and other essential areas in ultrasound images.

Foundation models have risen to prominence because they can operate as human-in-the-loop AI systems. Foundation and generative AI models could play a crucial role by enabling swift adaptation to various diseases, facilitating screening, early detection, tracking progression, and identifying non-invasive biomarkers with minimal training requirements, such as zero-shot or few-shot settings.

The company also began a collaboration in July 2024 with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop purpose-built foundation models and generative AI applications to improve diagnostics and patient care.

GE HealthCare will use Amazon Bedrock to create and deploy bespoke generative AI applications to boost efficiency, care delivery, and the patient experience. The company’s developers will use Amazon Q developer to accelerate software development by generating real-time code suggestions and securely completing tasks. It will also leverage Amazon Q Business to explore the intersection of multi-modal clinical and operational data with an aim of reducing the cognitive burden on physicians, enabling personalized care, and increasing efficiency.

Finally, the company plans to modernize its application suite with its own foundation models developed on Amazon SageMaker. By developing its own foundation models specialized for medical use cases, GE HealthCare intends to accelerate the development and deployment of web-based medical imaging applications and integrating these foundation models to drive efficiency, interoperability, and improve user experiences across the company’s equipment and software.

Revenues for GE HealthCare’s fiscal year 2024 (ended Dec. 31) were essentially flat, growing about $120 million (0.6%) over the previous fiscal year. The slight reported growth arose from sales of services increasing $172 million (3%), driven by increased pricing.

U.S.-Canada sales were the strongest among the regions, rising $430 million (5%) across all of the company’s business franchises. EMEA revenues of $5.05 billion were flat to the previous year, following a high single-digit increase in 2023. Growth in EMEA pharmaceutical diagnostics sales were largely offset by decreases in Imaging and Patient Care Solutions revenues.

China sales represented GE HealthCare’s greatest loss, dropping $425 million (15%) with declines in all segments due to the impact from the 2022 COVID stimulus programs—current year sales were affected by the delayed 2024 stimulus and the ongoing anti-corruption campaign in China. Rest of World proceeds rose $122 million (4%) with gains in all segment revenues, somewhat offset by unfavorable foreign currency impacts.

Imaging revenues dropped $89 million (1%) to $8.85 billion following high single-digit growth the previous year. Lower sales volumes in China, as well as unfavorable impacts from foreign currency, were cited as the reasons for the Imaging business’ slightly flagging proceeds.

Ionic Health’s nCommand Lite, distributed exclusively by GE HealthCare, earned FDA clearance in March. The vendor-agnostic, multi-modality system provides patient scanning support, remote access for image viewing and review, and the ability to connect to remote experts in order to guide the technologist operating a scanner. nCommand Lite supports magnetic resonance (MR), computed tomography (CT), and positron emission tomography/CT (PET/CT) scanning.

Caption AI software for rapid, point-of-care cardiac assessments using the Vscan Air SL handheld ultrasound rolled out in April. The software offers real-time visual guidance to prompt users on probe movements and features a quality meter to ensure capture of the best possible images. Once an image is captured, the AutoEF feature automatically calculates a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Users can also efficiently scan with AutoCapture and Save Best Clip features to capture the best quality image from each view.

ANALYST INSIGHTS: “Post-spinout, GEHC has been very aggressive with investments in AI acquisitions and internal development. It will be interesting to observe if these investments will allow GE to obtain above-market growth in 2026 and beyond.”

—Dave Sheppard, Co-Founder and Managing Director, MedWorld Advisors

April also saw release of the Voluson Signature 20 and 18 ultrasound systems for women’s health imaging. The ultrasounds integrate AI, advanced tools, and ergonomic design for speedier exam times while offering a clearer picture of many conditions impacting women’s health. A new “Hey Voluson” feature lets users operate the system with voice commands. The SonoLyst suite of tools identify fetal anatomy seen on standard views, then automatically annotates and measures where applicable. A SonoPelvicFlow feature simplifies pelvic floor assessments and speeds exams by automating plane alignment and measurement, reducing keystrokes up to 76%. Fibroid mapping uses AI to map, measure, and classify fibroids. fetalHS offers step-by-step guidance to identify normal fetal heart anatomy, speeding fetal heart assessments up to 48%.

The Venue Sprint point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) launched in September. Venue Sprint is a portable system in a tablet form with wireless Vscan Air dual probes designed for care in critical care, emergency medicine, and medical transport environments. It includes AI-enabled resources and documentation tools to simplify manual processes and drive consistency. With the release, GE HealthCare also made wireless probe connectivity, supplementary advanced clinical tools, and ViewPoint 6 updates to other Venue family ultrasounds.

The Versana Premier ultrasound debuted in October. It features automation and AI-enabled productivity tools as well as clinical features to serve general practice, OB-GYN, musculoskeletal, and cardiology. It also boasts VisionBoost architecture and high-quality probes with XDclear technology, first-class display technology, and a new imaging engine. Images can be optimized while scanning with Whizz, which continuously optimizes imaging in real time, and adjusted on a color display with Whizz Pro. Other features include OBGYN imaging tools like Whizz RenderLive and V-Live 2.0 to capture 3D/4D imaging and clearly follow the baby’s development.

Also in October was the unveiling of Aurora, a dual-head SPECT/CT with AI-powered technologies. It optimizes both SPECT and CT technologies to capture gamma rays emitted by radioactive tracers. These findings are transformed into data to help create images that show distribution of the tracer and enabling diagnoses in various areas of care. Aurora features Clarify DL image reconstruction to enhance bone SPECT image quality performance, ASiR-V for a lower dose, reduced noise levels, and improved spatial resolution. SnapShot Freeze 2 improves motion blur reduction, SwiftScan SPECT reduces scan time or injected dose by 25%, and the Evolution resolution recovery algorithm models the collimator/detector response. SmartMar technology reduces photon starvation, beam hardening, and streak artifacts caused by metal in the body.

The Signa Magnus 3T head-only MRI scanner earned FDA clearance in November. Meant to aid in detection of neurological, oncological, and psychiatric conditions, the MRI features an asymmetrical, head-only HyperG gradient design that achieves higher gradient performance because of a reduced inner diameter. The HyperG gradient tech achieves performance levels of 300 mT/m and 750 T/m/s, allowing faster image acquisition while using the same power requirement as the whole-body Signa Premier 3T system. They asymmetrical design shifts the gradient isocenter to the coil’s patient edge instead of its geometrical center for patient head access and to avoid shoulder width constraints. ODEN (Oscillating Gradient Diffusion Encoding) uses oscillating gradients to provide cellularity contrast, which can be important for neurological oncology.

November also saw launch of the Pristina Via mammography system with new features to minimize repetitive tasks and streamline workflows. Zero-click acquisition functionality enables faster workflows, and no wait time between exposures thanks to Pristina VBT image-to-cycle times being twice as fast as other mammography systems on the market. Vendor-neutral prior image comparison reduces time spent analyzing prior exams and allowing more efficient final assessments. GE HealthCare also said it uses the lowest radiation dose for all breast thicknesses among major mammography systems.

Sonic DL for 3D was unveiled in December. The company said it offers up to 12 times MRI scan acceleration, and the extension to volumetric imaging broadens its applicability to brain, spine, orthopedic, and body exams. In neurology, it allows high-resolution imaging of complex brain structures, enabling quicker, clearer insights into neurological conditions. In orthopedics, it helps speed imaging of joints, ligaments, and bones, reducing scan times to minimize patient discomfort, especially for those with mobility challenges.

Advanced Visualization Solutions (AVS) proceeds rose a slight $37 million (1%) to $5.13 billion. This was mainly a result of higher U.S.-Canada sales, which were partially curtailed by lower sales in China and unfavorable impacts of foreign currency.

The Advanced Visualization Solutions (AVS) franchise posted sales of $5.13 billion, growing $37 million (1%) over the previous year. An increase in sales in the U.S. and Canada were partially tempered by lower sales in China and unfavorable foreign currency impacts.

The company began the acquisition of Cleveland, Ohio-based MIM Software in January 2024, and completed the roughly $283 million deal three months later. MIM Software provides medical imaging analysis and AI solutions for radiation oncology, molecular radiotherapy, diagnostic imaging, and urology at imaging centers, hospitals, specialty clinics, and research organizations.

The company’s portfolio adds integration of diagnostic images from multiple modalities into treatments plans, as well as automation to reduce repetitive tasks and manual interventions. Quantitation and advanced processing for diagnostic medicine and nuclear medicine to determine therapy response was also included, as well as a platform to assist with Theranostics imaging and dosimetry. GE HealthCare integrated MIM Software solutions into its advanced visualization offerings to facilitate AI-based segmentation and contouring as well as dosimetry analysis.

The Prostate Volume Assist (PVA) urology-based AI software feature launched in March. The new ultrasound imaging feature supports clinicians in prostate imaging, biopsies, and guiding treatment. The solution quickly captures prostate volume, determining the organ’s calculations and measurements with an automated, one-click process. PVA is available on the company’s bkActiv, bk3000/5000, and bkSpecto ultrasound machines.

July saw the introduction of the MIM Symphony Prostate to support high dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy. The solution directly visualizes tumors from MRI scans during live ultrasound procedures for HDR prostate treatments, correcting MRI orientation and offering MRI guidance. It aligns contours on preoperatively acquired MRI with live ultrasound to make the prostate, lesions, and critical structures clearly visible during HDR treatment. MIM Symphony HDR Prostate defines and tracks changes to needle guide placement even as the prostate moves during the procedure. The ReSlicer tool corrects differences between MRI supine and ultrasound lithotomy orientations, and needles are automatically digitized on CT or ultrasound planning images.

July also witnessed the deal to acquire Intelligent Ultrasound’s clinical AI business for about $51 million. The company specializes in integrated, AI-driven image analysis tools to make ultrasound smarter and more efficient. Intelligent Ultrasound pioneered the ScanNav Assist AI technology, which powers Sonolystlive and SonoLyst X/IR on GE HealthCare’s Voluson Expert and Voluson Signature ultrasounds. Intelligent Ultrasound’s R&D experts will also help drive AI-enabled image recognition and innovation for GE HealthCare’s Women’s Health ultrasounds and its broader portfolio. The deal bolsters the company’s portfolio of AI-enabled devices and supports its precision care strategy to solve for inefficiencies in the clinical care workflow.

The MIM Software division obtained FDA clearance to perform Centiloid amyloid imaging analysis and quantification in September. Available with the vendor-neutral MIMneuro solution, the Centiloid scale tool will help clinicians more confidently determine amyloid plaque density in the patient’s brain—amyloid plaque density is a component of Alzheimer’s disease pathology. The scale is a standardized metric to compare amyloid results, with zero as the average value from high-certainty amyloid-negative patients and 100 as the average value for typical Alzheimer’s patients. The software takes PET amyloid images, provides clinicians instructions to automatically generate quantitative results, and presents the data in a standardized report for clinicians to review alongside the images.

MIM Software earned an FDA nod to perform absorbed dose calculation of radionuclides using a Monte Carlo method in October. The Monte Carlo method is a standard for radiopharmaceutical therapy (RPT) dosimetry. MIM SurePlan MRT with the Dose Planning Method can offer quick, accurate Monte Carlo dose calculations in seconds via a central processing unit in healthcare organizations’ existing hardware—a graphics processing unit isn’t needed. The tech transforms the otherwise cumbersome process of performing dosimetry into a clinically realistic process via automation and standardization. In a few clicks, and with built-in guidance, users can review absorbed doses. SPECT reconstruction, organ-at-risk segmentation, and time-activity curve fitting can be automated as well.

The Patient Care Solutions (PCS) business pocketed $3.12 billion in sales, dropping $17 million (1%) from the prior year. This was mainly due to lower volume in monitoring solutions after growth in the previous year and unfavorable foreign currency impacts. These were somewhat offset by higher volume in the maternal infant care product line.

The Prucka 3 with CardioLab EP recording system for diagnosing and treating cardiac arrhythmias was announced in January. The product provides an ecosystem of mapping technologies to provide advanced analytics. Its digital platform has high signal fidelity and reduces environmental noise thanks to new signaling capabilities and enhanced software for powerline technologies. The platform also offers a path to emerging electrophysiology technologies that depend on quality signals for quick interpretation and clinical results.

The Novii+ wireless antepartum and intrapartum maternal and fetal monitor won an FDA nod for an expanded indication to pregnant patients 34 weeks and greater in February. This extended usage before the previously defined use of 37 weeks and greater of pregnancy. The monitor non-invasively measures and displays fetal heart rate, maternal heart rate, and uterine activity via a belt-free, wireless form factor.

Portrait VSM’s FDA clearance arrived in April, bolstering the company’s growing Portrait Ecosystem. The vital signs monitor provides readings for blood pressure, pulse rate, oxygen saturation, body temperature and respiratory rate. Portrait VSM leverages GE HealthCare’s SuperSTAT non-invasive blood pressure algorithm for precise, accurate measurement readings. It also features customized Early Warning Scores and can connect with the latest iteration of the Portrait Mobile wireless, wearable continuous monitor. Through one click of the barcode scanner, Portrait VSM imports patient demographic data and a snapshot of continuously monitored respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, and pulse rate data from Portrait Mobile.

Pharmaceutical Diagnostics (PDx) segment revenues reached $2.51 billion, ascending $202 million (9%) over the previous year. Growth mainly occurred in the U.S.-Canada and EMEA regions driven by sales volume, an increase in price, and new product introductions.

The Flyrcado (fluripidaz F 18) injection positron emission tomography myocardial perfusion imaging (PET MPI) agent for detection of coronary artery disease (CAD) was FDA approved in September. According to GE HealthCare, it has higher diagnostic efficacy compared to single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) MPI. It can be manufactured in an offsite pharmacy and delivered as a ready-to-use unit dose. Its 109-minute half-life is significantly longer than existing PET MPI tracers, removing the need for on-site tracer production and generator maintenance. Flyrcado brings the first practical opportunity to combine exercise stress testing with cardiac PET imaging for CAD.

The company began a deal in December to purchase the remaining 50% stake it didn’t already own in Nihon Medi-Physics (NMP) from Sumitomo Chemical. NMP’s portfolio includes GE HealthCare radiopharmaceuticals for images in neurology, cardiology, and oncology. The company has 13 manufacturing facilities, as well as a business focusing on non-clinical and clinical development of radiotracers and theranostics research. GE HealthCare has held its 50% stake in NMP since acquiring Amersham in 2004.

$19.55 Billion
Prior Fiscal: $18.34 Billion
Percentage Change: +6.6%
R&D Expenditure: $1.2B
Best FY23 Quarter: Q4 $5.2B
Latest Quarter: Q1 $4.6B
No. of Employees: 51,000

There were no fireworks or large celebrations, no parades or formal proclamations. And it definitely didn’t warrant a national holiday.

It was, in fact, just another ordinary day. A Wednesday, actually.

It was the first Wednesday of the first week in the first month of the new year.

On that day—Jan. 4, 2023—at precisely 9:30 a.m. EST, GE HealthCare achieved its freedom. On that day, with the simple yet symbolic Nasdaq opening bell peal, GE HealthCare officially untethered itself from the General Electric mother ship and began its nascent journey as an independent company.

“Today is an incredibly exciting day for GE HealthCare as we become an independent company and start a new chapter advancing our position as a global leader in precision care,” President/CEO Peter J. Arduini declared upon his company’s liberation. “GE HealthCare colleagues worldwide are united in our purpose to create a world where healthcare has no limits, and we look forward to delivering for providers, patients, and shareholders in the years ahead.”

Such deliverance should be relatively straightforward for GE HealthCare, given its solid history and experience in public health service. With a 160-plus country presence, 51,000 employees, an equipment cache exceeding 4 million items, and R&D investments topping $1 billion, the company presumably is more capable than most new ventures to succeed on its own.

Studies have shown that spinoff companies often outperform broader market indices, usually within the first few years of their independence. And while they can create value over time through focused management and strategy flexibility, spinoffs frequently stumble at first as they acclimate to their newfound autonomy.

More often than not, a spinoff’s prospects for big profits increases with time, particularly if the entity can overcome cash flow troubles and persistent M&A pressures. Penn State research supports this tenet: university researchers found that spinoff stocks handily beat their industry peers and the S&P 500 by approximately 10 percentage points annually in the first three years after the split, with the biggest gains occurring in the second year of independence.

Harvard Business Review data, however, suggest the contrary. The magazine examined 350 spinoffs occurring between 2000 and 2020 (with $1 billion-plus valuations) and found that half failed to create any new combined value within two years of separation, and 25% destroyed “a significant amount” of shareholder value. The analysis concluded the spinoffs “delivered as little as a 5% increase in combined market cap two years after spinning off.”

Ultimately, a spinoff’s success will depend on numerous factors—market growth, competition, industry fragmentation, business strategy, management team, and operational excellence among them. Nevertheless, hedge fund manager/investor Joel Greenblatt contends the risk is worth the reward.

“Spinoffs, in general, beat the market,” Greenblatt once said. “They beat the market quite handily, on average.”

Obviously, it is too soon to tell whether GE HealthCare will prove Penn State’s research or Harvard Business Review’s data correct. So far, it appears to be validating Greenblatt’s viewpoint, lending credence to Penn State’s rationale.

Though it stumbled a bit out of the gate, GE HealthCare beat market estimates in three of the four quarters last year, positioning itself to achieve the big profits Greenblatt and other investors have hypothesized for spinoffs.

The new company also posted a respectable freshman year earnings report, increasing 2023 revenue 6.6% to $19.55 billion and expanding gross profit 10.3% to $7.92 billion. “This past year was not only a period of foundational growth and transformation, but also one of substantial achievement and resilience,” Arduini told shareholders in GE HealthCare’s first annual report. “Our inaugural year as a standalone company was marked by solid results through the full year of 2023. This consistent performance is a testament to our people, our operational strength, and our strategic focus. We have successfully navigated the complexities of dynamic markets and macro-economic headwinds, demonstrating our ability to deliver results consistently.”

Consistently and thoroughly, actually—GE HealthCare notched gains in all its reporting segments and geographic areas in fiscal 2023. China led the regional charge with a 10% sales hike ($2.78 billion); EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) placed second with an 8% revenue increase ($5.05 billion); and the United States/Canada and Rest of World each grew proceeds 5% ($8.55 billion and $3.15 billion, respectively).

GE HealthCare’s reporting segment ace was Pharmaceutical Diagnostics, which provides diagnostic agents to the global radiology and nuclear medicine industry. Revenue in this segment soared 18%, or $348 million to $2.3 billion, due to price increases and improved demand.

Price increases were the common denominator in GE HealthCare’s business segment growth rates in FY23. In Patient Care Solutions (PCS)—which provides medical devices, consumables, services, and digital solutions to customers globally—the increases combined with operational improvements drove an 8% revenue rise ($3.14 billion total). The PCS division also added some potential future profit makers to its pipeline through several U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearances and product debuts.

The first prospective moneymaker was the CARESCAPE Canvas patient monitoring platform, which won FDA 510(k) clearance last April. Touted as a FlexAcuity solution, CARESCAPE Canvas’ smart parameter technology can be used for patients at all acuity levels. The monitoring platform leverages micromodules that connect with standardized medical USB technology; by adding or disconnecting cables equipped for various configurations, clinicians can provide more efficient care based on patients’ needs. CARESCAPE Canvas also is equipped with flexible, easy-to-configure software and interchangeable frames for advanced parameters, thus enabling monitoring devices to be quickly redeployed as needed.

GE HealthCare developed and tested the CARESCAPE Canvas bedside monitor with its entire ecosystem—including current and past devices—so healthcare institutions can upgrade their monitoring systems at their own pace.

FROM THE TOP: “This past year was not only a period of foundational growth and transformation, but also one of substantial achievement and resilience.”

—Peter J. Arduini, president, CEO, and director.

The PCS unit’s second regulatory victory transpired in August 2023 with the FDA 510(k) clearance of its Portrait Mobile wireless and wearable monitoring solution. Designed for in-hospital use, Portrait Mobile continuously collects patients’ vital sign data from wearable sensors and wirelessly sends the statistics to a smartphone-like monitor. The non-stop readings are automatically shared to a dashboard that clinicians can use to track changes in patients’ health in real time.

Portrait Mobile’s sensors include adhesive chest patches for respiratory and pulse rate monitoring, and wireless fingertip pulse oximeters for collecting oxygen saturation readings. The system specifically is designed to allow hospitalized patients to move about freely in their room or the hospital at large.

“It’s important for recovery that patients be able to move around freely while their vital signs are being monitored,” Neal Sandy, general manager of monitoring solutions at GE HealthCare, said upon the FDA clearance. “Until Portrait Mobile, patient monitoring required that patients be tethered to their beds, limiting mobility. GE HealthCare designed Portrait Mobile with this need in mind…”

Ten days after the Portrait Mobile clearance, GE HealthCare launched software that automatically aggregates atrial fibrillation patient data from different sources. The software, dubbed CardioVisio, aims to spare physicians from time-consuming searches through multiple systems, charts, and screens for patients’ atrial fibrillation history.

“With CardioVisio for AFib, we’re providing cardiologists with a powerful tool to tell the story of the heart,” GE HealthCare Cardiology Solutions General Manager Eigil Samset, Ph.D., declared upon the product’s release, “including previous diagnoses, prescribed medications, interventions, and co-morbidities.”

The story of the heart was just one of many tales told by GE HealthCare’s business segments last year. Imaging was by far the most prolific raconteur, spinning more than a half-dozen yarns about inner body visualization technology.

The unit related its first story just days after GE HealthCare’s corporate independence, revealing the acquisition of French computer-assisted interventional radiology firm IMACTIS. The company develops tools that offer real-time 3D computed tomography (CT) images for stereotactic needle guidance; its IMACTIS CT-Navigation system improves workflow by increasing procedural accuracy while helping to reduce procedure time and radiation dose for patients and physicians.

Imaging recounted another stereotactic needle guidance tale in April 2023 with the introduction of CT Navigation, a tool that offers clinicians detailed, real-time 3D computed tomography images for stereotactic needle guidance in various areas including interventional and oncological procedures as well as biopsies, ablations, drainage, and therapeutics, among others. Rather than working wholly within a CT system’s narrow bore, interventionalists using CT Navigation can simply place a sensor on the patient inside the gantry. Once scans are complete and the patient is removed from inside the system, interventionalists have full range of motion while navigating a needle more easily and safely through anatomy using the placed sensor and detailed CT images.

The Imaging unit capped the spring with the FDA 510(k) clearance of deep learning software (Precision DL) and deep learning technology for faster MRIs (Sonic DL). The former aims to improve image quality on GE HealthCare’s PET/CT Omni legend, and speed up scan time. It also helps clinicians better detect small lesions.

Sonic DL accelerates MR image acquisition, capturing photographs up to 12 times faster than conventional methods. The FDA-cleared software produces cardiac imaging from a single heartbeat, and its speed significantly reduces motion artifact risk, according to the company. Sonic DL’s rapid image acquisition functionality also helps simplify cardiac MRI procedures on patients with arrhythmias, heart failure, or have difficulty holding their breath during the exam. Furthermore, its ability to reduce cardiac MRI scan times by up to 83% can facilitate better MR suite workflow, minimize exam scheduling backlogs, and enhance radiology department productivity.

The Imaging unit changed the focus of its narrative last fall, spotlighting artificial intelligence-enabled technologies, remote scanning capabilities, and an interventional cardiology solution.

That cardiology solution came courtesy of the FDA’s October 2023 clearance of Allia IGS Pulse, an angiography system designed specifically for interventional cardiologists. The system features a monopolar X-ray tube for capturing images for diagnosing various cardiovascular conditions, and optimized dose management for patients of all sizes—including large and bariatric folks with a BMI greater than 30. Allia IGS Pulse also contains an updated version of GE HealthCare’s AutoRight AI algorithm—AutoRight Plus—which can adjust up to seven different parameters at once using real-time patient data.

GE HealthCare’s Imaging unit rounded out its portfolio augmentation last November with a week-long string of product premieres. First up was the FDA 510(k) clearance of the new digital version of Digital Expert Access with remote scanning, the first remote patient scan solution with such authorization. The tool enables clinicians to share expertise, best practices and advice, and provides them with real-time, remote console control.

Within days of the Digital Expert Access clearance, GE HealthCare introduced SIGNA Champion, a 1.5T wide-bore MRI system designed to save power, increase throughput, and enhance the overall patient experience. SIGNA Champion is compatible with the company’s AIR Recon DL and Sonic DL, and its AIR Coils support a more natural and comfortable patient experience. AIR Coils wrap around the patient like a blanket, offering a thinner, lighter solution compared to conventional RF coils, enhancing patient comfort.

Imaging’s final triumph ensued with the FDA 510(k) clearance (late November 2023) of Critical Care Suite 2.1, featuring a pneumothorax (PTX) algorithm for detecting, notifying, triaging, and diagnosing PTX. The Critical Care Suite update gives clinicians immediate on-device PTX detection capabilities—upon finding a PTX, an overlay is displayed in the affected area both on-device as well as in PACS to help with localization and improved diagnosis speed and accuracy.

“Through an emphasis on R&D, we continue to innovate across our four segments,” Arduini told analysts earlier this year during a Q4/full-year 2023 earnings call. “We launched more than 40 new innovations in 2023, many of which are AI and digitally enabled, bringing more opportunity to increase gross margin with these enhanced capabilities.”

Those enhanced capabilities helped enhance the Imaging unit’s bottom line: Revenue climbed 6% ($596 million) to $10.58 billion, driven by growth in magnetic resonance and MI/CT products, supply chain fulfillment improvements, and new product introductions, according to GE HealthCare’s annual report.

Some of those same factors—supply chain fulfillment and new product introductions—contributed to a $35 million (1%) uptick in 2023 Ultrasound sales ($3.45 billion total). Organic revenue rose 2% on growth in the unit’s Cardiovascular and Point of Care/Handheld product lines, where most of the innovations debuted last year.

Ultrasound’s first portfolio augmentation arose from the February (2023) purchase of Caption Health Inc., a privately-held developer of AI-powered ultrasound guidance technology. The company’s echocardiogram platform is designed for early heart disease detection; its software walks clinicians through each step of the scanning and image-capture process, and calculates ejection fraction—i.e., the amount of blood the heart pumps out with each beat. The company also had been working on pulmonary-focused ultrasound applications at the time of its purchase.

Another boost to the Ultrasound unit’s Cardiovascular and POC/Handheld product lines occurred last summer with the introduction of Vscan Air SL, a handheld wireless imaging system for quickly diagnosing cardiac and vascular diseases at the point of care.

Vscan Air SL features GE HealthCare’s proprietary SignalMax and XDclear technology, which provide high levels of penetration, resolution, and imaging performance sensitivity. The solution offers both a sector and linear array on a single device, enabling users to switch between focused cardiac assessments and vascular assessments at the point of care, regardless of the setting (inside or outside the hospital).

Point of Care welcomed a new kinsman last fall, unveiling its Venue POC ultrasound systems line with Caption Guidance. The AI-driven feature provides real-time step-by-step instructions for capturing cardiac images to detect early heart disease in at-risk patients. The scan guidance technology aims to help clinicians working in anesthesiology, emergency departments, and critical care wards; future plans include potential incorporation into handheld systems for better diagnostic capabilities.

Other product introductions within the Ultrasound unit focused on surgical guidance and breast cancer detection improvements.

bkActiv debuted in April 2023 to help provide better guidance during urological, colorectal, and pelvic floor surgical procedures. The next-generation intraoperative ultrasound imaging system features automatic no-touch autogain and advanced algorithms to improve image quality.

Seven months later, GE HealthCare released new AI apps designed to detect breast cancer at an earlier stage and improve overall workflow productivity. MyBreastAI Suite integrates three AI applications from iCAD’s ProFound Breast Health Suite to achieve its goals:

• • ProFound AI for DBT: Provides lesion Certainty of Finding and Case Scores, aiding radiologists in decision-making and potentially reducing reading time by up to 52%.

• • SecondLook for 2D Mammography: Helps identify regions of interest on mammograms to improve radiological assessments.

• • PowerLook Density Assessment: Standardizes a breast density assessment, reducing variability and providing accurate, AI-based analysis.

“Our R&D efforts are focused on developing digital, artificial intelligence-focused solutions that are accessible, sustainable, interoperable, and beneficial to healthcare providers, Arduini wrote in the annual report, “advancing our vision to create a world where healthcare has no limits.”

Besides the new product introductions, GE HealthCare advanced its “no-limit” medical vision through more than a dozen collaborations, including Advantus Health Partners, DePuy Synthes, the Mayo Clinic, Sofie Biosciences, Mediport, reLink Medical, and Masimo, among others.

$18.46 Billion
Prior Fiscal: $17.72 Billion
Percentage Change: +4.2%
R&D Expenditure: $1.03B
Best FY22 Quarter: Q4 $4.9B
Latest Quarter: Q1 $4.71B
No. of Employees: 50,000

In November 2021, General Electric (GE) revealed plans to form three industry-leading, global, investment-grade public companies. These GE progeny would focus on the sectors of aviation, energy, and—most importantly for MPO—healthcare.

GE’s portfolio of energy businesses (GE Renewable Energy, GE Power, GE Digital, and GE Energy Financial Services) will become GE Vernova in early 2024 after the spinoff is executed. The remaining Aviation business will be rebranded as GE Aerospace once GE Vernova becomes a standalone entity.

Board members for GE HealthCare were announced in September, with GE chairman and CEO Lawrence Culp named non-executive chairman and GE HealthCare CEO Peter Arduini named a director. GE’s board gave its nod to the GE HealthCare spinoff—officially, GE Healthcare Holding LLC—about two months later. The company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as “GEHC” on Jan. 4, 2023, marking an end to the spinoff.

“Today is an incredibly exciting day for GE HealthCare as we become an independent company and start a new chapter advancing our position as a global leader in precision care,” Arduini told the press in the Jan. 4 release. “We are on the verge of true industry transformation as digital innovation reshapes the experience of patients and providers with an increased need for more precise, connected, and efficient care. GE HealthCare colleagues worldwide are united in our purpose to create a world where healthcare has no limits, and we look forward to delivering for providers, patients, and shareholders in the years ahead.”

ANALYST INSIGHTS: As predicted last year, GE HealthCare is a much more exciting company now that it is officially its own public entity. They are aggressively making portfolio moves (especially in AI) to put them in position for positive future growth. Expect that behavior to continue in the foreseeable future.

—Dave Sheppard, Co-Founder and Managing Director, MedWorld Advisors

GE HealthCare posted $18.46 billion in revenues in fiscal year 2022, rising 4.2% above the previous year. Proceeds from imaging and ultrasound equipment increased, mainly due to strong growth in the U.S. and Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Overall equipment sales reached $9.64 billion, growing 5.9%. This was partly offset by flagging revenues in China. Service revenues also went up, driven by the continued growth of the company’s Healthcare Systems (HCS) and Pharmaceutical Diagnostics (PDx) businesses. Service offerings generated $8.82 billion of sales in 2022 and grew 2.3% over the prior year.

HCS proceeds amounted to $16.49 billion in the last fiscal year, posting a 5.1% increase.

The HIMSS22 meeting saw the unveiling of GE HealthCare’s Edison digital health platform, a vendor-agnostic hosting and data aggregation platform with an artificial intelligence (AI) engine. Edison can connect devices and other data sources into an aggregated clinical data layer. Open and published interfaces allow app deployment, with the platform supporting app integration into existing workflows. The platform was designed to scale across cloud, server, data center, or on-device deployment.

In April, the company earned FDA approval for its End-tidal (Et) control software to deliver general anesthesia on its Aisys CS2 Anesthesia delivery system. The software semi-automates anesthesia delivery to set targets for end-tidal oxygen and anesthetic agent. Once targets are set, the software achieves and maintains them regardless of changes in hemodynamic and metabolic status. The software also reduces drug waste, lowering cost of care and greenhouse emissions.

The Portrait Mobile wireless patient monitoring system was introduced in June after being developed in GE’s global center of excellence for monitoring solutions in Helsinki, Finland. The system captures respiration rate, oxygen saturation, and pulse rate to spot changes signaling development of cardiorespiratory complications or infectious disease. A routable communications architecture lets hospitals leverage existing network infrastructure when deploying the system.

July saw GE HealthCare’s unveiling of the Voluson Expert 22 ultrasound for the OBGYN market. It uses graphic-based beam former technology for higher image quality and features flexible image functions. Lyric Architecture helps reveal fine anatomy in 2D/3D/4D to deliver uniformity throughout an image. Its AI-powered tools include SonoLyst, which adds annotations and measurements to identify fetal anatomy; SonoPelvicFloor, which automates plane alignment and measurements; and SonoCNS, which aligns and displays recommended fetal brain views and measurements from a 3D Volume.

The Definium 656 HD fixed X-ray overhead tube suspension (OTS) system with Intelligent Workflow Suite arrived in the market in August. The digital radiographic system uses GE’s 100 um FlashPad HD high-resolution detectors and Helix 2.2 image processing software. Five-axis motorization and auto-positioning helps reduce technologist strain, and precise long image stitching is achieved with Auto Image Paste at the table and wall stand enhanced with AutoSpine.

GE’s AIR Recon DL MRI scanner earned 510(k) clearance for the company’s 3D and Propeller motion-insensitive image sequence tool imaging sequences in August. The FDA nod endowed AIR Recon DL with expanded compatibility from 2D to 3D imaging sequences. The Propeller tool can be used for patients prone to respiration or other motion during MRI exams as well as pediatric, neurodegenerative, geriatric, and claustrophobic patients who can’t remain still.

GE introduced the Omni Legend all-digital PET-CT system in October. Omni Legend’s Precision DL deep learning image processing software—which was engineered with a deep neural network trained on thousands of images made with different reconstructive methods—aims to produce better contrast-to-noise ratio, contrast recovery, and quantitative accuracy. A brand-new category of digital BGO detector material features small crystal delivery over two times the sensitivity to prior scanners, according to GE. The PET-CT system also includes GE’s Q.Clear (BRSEM) PET image reconstruction tech for reliable quantification, and MotionFree to correct respiratory motion artifacts. LED ambient lighting also encourages patients into a calming mood, with a graphic pattern to reduce exam stress.

November saw the introduction of the SIGNA Experience platform of four synergistic technologies for MRI scanning. The cornerstone SIGNA One imaging software platform features AIR Recon DL deep-learning software, AIR x and AIRTouch to facilitate scan setup, and lightweight, flexible AIR Coils.

Pharmaceutical Diagnostics (PDx) revenue reached $1.97 billion last year. This represented a 2.9% decline from the prior year.

GE HealthCare was also involved in a few strategic partnerships last year. The first was announced in March: GE’s MUSE cardiac management system—which connects to and integrates into the electronic medical record (EMR) to streamline the flow of cardiac info—views and interprets MUSE ECGs taken using AliveCor’s KardiaMobile 6L personal ECG device. The ECGs are both analyzed by GE HealthCare’s algorithms and become a part of the MUSE patient record and the EMR. This way, any physician in the hospital network involved in the patient’s care can interact with them. The physician can also compare the patient’s most recent KardiaMobile 6L ECG to prior ECGs or other relevant results.

A collaboration with Medtronic began in April to provide Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs) and Office-Based Labs (OBLs) with both companies’ product portfolios, financial solutions, and service. GE will provide imaging, monitoring, ultrasound, and digital solutions like the Edison-powered, AI-based interventional imaging chain. Medtronic contributes its range of cardiac rhythm, pain management, peripheral vascular, and kyphoplasty technologies.

GE HealthCare revealed an investment of up to $50 million in Israeli startup Pulsenmore in May. The finances aim to support global adoption, FDA clearance, and commercial expansion of Pulsenmore’s homecare ultrasound. Pulsenmore’s device includes a handheld ultrasound that docks with a smartphone, a mobile app for clinical consultation, web app for clinician-side interaction, and software API to integrate online services with health records. Its periodic fetal ultrasound scanning can also be offered as an online, clinician-guided telecommunication service or offline, app-guided service.

$17.72 Billion
Prior Fiscal: $18.01 Billion
Percentage Change: -1.6%
R&D Expenditure: $847M
Best FY21 Quarter: Q4 $4.62B
Latest Quarter: Q1 $4.36B
No. of Employees: 48,000

After years of speculation, GE Healthcare is finally going solo.

In November, GE proclaimed its plan to split the company into three new organizations: GE Healthcare, GE Aviation, and one company combining its Renewable Energy, Power, and Digital businesses. The firm expects the Healthcare business to be spun off in early 2023. GE will retain a stake of 19.9% in the standalone company.

“We have a responsibility to move with speed to shape the future of flight, deliver precision health, and lead the energy transition,” GE chairman and CEO Lawrence Culp told the press. “The momentum we have built puts us in a position of strength to take this exciting next step in GE’s transformation and realize the full potential of each of our businesses.”

Culp will serve as non-executive chairman of the GE healthcare company after its spinoff. He’ll stay on as chairman and CEO of GE until the second spinoff and will lead the aviation-focused company moving forward. Peter Arduini, formerly president and CEO of Integra LifeSciences for about a decade, began leading GE Healthcare at the beginning of this year and will continue to do so following the spinoff. The announcement that Arduini would replace the retiring 13-year GE veteran and Healthcare president/CEO Kieran Murphy came around the end of Q2 last year.

“Pete is stepping in to lead a passionate team at the forefront of an ecosystem striving for precision health, and I look forward to seeing GE Healthcare’s continued leadership for years to come,” Murphy told the press.

The appointment is a homecoming for Arduini, who earlier in his career spent 15 years at GE Healthcare in a variety of leadership positions within Computed Tomography & Molecular Imaging, Healthcare Services, and U.S. sales.

“…the business’s global scale, technical and commercial capabilities, and growth potential as one of the world’s leading medical technology companies is compelling,” Arduini told the press. “I am thrilled to be rejoining GE and for the opportunity to work with GE Healthcare’s team.”

ANALYST INSIGHTS: GE Healthcare is about to get a new lease on life as they will be spun out as a separate business unit in 2023. Since they announced this entity split within GE in late 2021, GE Healthcare has already been more aggressive with M&A, product releases, and investments in inorganic innovation. Expect more of this behavior as they no longer have to answer to GE corporate (or support their debt) as they go forward into an exciting future.

—Dave Sheppard, Co-Founder and Managing Director, MedWorld Advisors

GE Healthcare felt the supply chain disruptions faster than GE’s other businesses in 2021 but cost, sourcing, and logistics management helped to deliver a solid performance. The segment’s revenue last year fell a paltry 1.6% to accrue $17.72 billion, but this was due to completion of the sale of GE’s BioPharma business to Danaher in March 2020. GE reported residual revenue (about $830 million) from the business for 2020. None was reported in 2021, hence the overall loss.

Equipment revenue totaled $9.1 billion in 2021, dropping 8.9% from the previous year due to reductions in life care solutions within healthcare systems products, where there were more COVID-19 related product sales. Supply chain challenges also hindered the business but were partially offset by stronger imaging and ultrasound performance.

Service revenue grew 7.5% to $8.6 billion thanks to a return to pre-pandemic volume in pharmaceutical diagnostics and the healthcare systems service’s continued growth. The healthcare systems segment’s overall sales in 2021 grew 2% over the previous year, reaching $15.7 billion.

Last March, the company unveiled Vscan Air, a wireless, pocket-sized ultrasound with whole-body scanning capabilities. To date, it remains one of the smallest and most lightweight handheld ultrasound devices.

Shallow and deep exams can be completed by flipping the two-sided probe without switching probes. Software presets enable fast scanning, and a single-button probe allows easy image capture and freezing.

Auto-anonymized images can be shared with patients post-scan as well.

In March, the business also revealed the StarGuide next-gen SPECT/CT system for bone procedures, cardiology, neurology, oncology, and other specialties. The system’s 12 CZT digital focus detectors scan in 3D and are optimized for theranostic procedures—where therapy delivery and diagnosis are combined in one procedure. The new CZT detector technology permits functional anatomical mapping, attenuation correction, flexible image reconstruction, and dose reduction.

FDA 510(k) clearance for the OEC 3D surgical imaging system was obtained in March as well. OEC 3D takes intraoperative 3D images for spine and orthopedic procedures with a 19 x 19 x 19-cm field of view and an advanced reconstruction engine quickly presents images with tools and analysis for surgical assessment. OEC 3D is also open to interface with navigation and robotics.

The Venue Fit point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) system was introduced at the end of last March. It’s the smallest system in the company’s Venue family. At the same time, the RealTime EF AI tool for cardiac scanning and other software applications were rolled out for the Venue POCUS family. RealTime EF continuously calculates the heart’s real-time ejection fraction. Lung Sweep provides a dynamic, panoramic view of the whole lung. Renal Diagram is a documentation tool to select labels from a prepopulated list that correlates with images captured, so clinicians can follow up on suspected kidney infections.

In May, AIR Recon DL deep learning image reconstruction was 510(k) cleared for GE’s SIGNA 7.0T MRI scanners. Part of the firm’s Edison intelligence platform, AIR Recon DL leverages all raw data coming off the MRI scanner to maximize image quality and resolution, even with shorter scan times. Clinical users have reported observations of sharper and less noisy images and 30%-50% exam time reduction using the tool.

In July, GE Healthcare integrated Spectronic Medical’s AI-based software into its portfolio. When combined with Air Recon DL, MR-only based radiotherapy planning is enabled for better soft tissue differentiation than traditional CT so radiotherapy can be better directed. High-quality MR images generated by GE scanners are converted into synthetic CT images using Spectronic’s AI tool, giving CT images with MR soft tissue details to more accurately target lesions.

The AMX Navigate portable, digital X-ray hit the market last September. The X-ray’s power-assisted free motion telescoping column aims to lower lift force by 70% and decrease technologist injury. A Zero Click Exam feature uses a barcode reader to match the patient to the worklist, and Auto Protocol Assist automatically selects the patient’s correct protocol.

September also saw the introduction of the Revolution Ascend CT system. Its new 75-cm-wide gantry, 40-mm detector coverage, and lower table position accommodate high body mass index patients and trauma cases that would otherwise be too delicate to maneuver. The new Effortless Workflow suite of AI tools personalize scans with significantly less technologist effort. According to GE, Ascend reduces clicks necessary to execute a CT scan by 66% and makes exams 21% faster. A dedicated deep neural network generates images with excellent clarity at a low dose.

The $1.45 billion deal for advanced surgical visualization firm BK Medical began last September and was completed about three months later. BK Medical specializes in intra-op imaging and surgical navigation to guide clinicians during minimally invasive and robotic surgeries and visualize deep tissue during neuro and abdominal surgery, as well as ultrasound urology. GE added the fast-growing and relatively new field of real-time surgical visualization to its pre- and post-op ultrasound capabilities for an end-to-end offering. The combination of GE Healthcare’s diagnostic imaging technology with BK’s ability to enable decision-making and surgical visualization in intervention will allow better decision-making throughout the care continuum.

Also in September came introduction of the Definium Tempo fixed, overhead tube suspension (OTS) digital X-ray system, meant to be a “personal assistant” to radiologists and technologists. It acts like an in-room command center with a tube-mounted console for patient selection, technique modification, and positioning setup. Automated workflows help start an exam and auto positioning, auto centering, and auto tracking automate system component positioning to maximize overall ergonomic operation. Definium Tempo is also equipped with features to deliver consistent images and lower variability in positioning and image quality.

The MyoSPECT next-gen cardiac-dedicated nuclear medicine scanner with extended field-of-view processing and automated workflow features was also unveiled in September. It features a wider table and 76% increase in field-of-view volume. Compact CZT detector tech and multi-pinhole collimator design features create a tomographic imaging arc of the heart with motionless detectors so every detector focuses on the heart simultaneously.

GE obtained 510(k) clearance for its X-ray AI algorithm to help assess endotracheal tube (ETT) placement in November. The solution was distributed under FDA COVID-19 imaging guidance since November 2020. Misplaced ETTs can lead to hyperinflation, pneumothorax, cardiac arrest, and death. Over the last year, 200 hospitals deployed the technology. The AI automatically detects ETTs in chest X-ray images and provides an accurate, automated measurement of ETT positioning within seconds of acquiring the image.

The firm unveiled the SIGNA Hero 3.0T MRI in November as well, named after the healthcare workers who have and continue to care for the global community amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It features a 70-cm bore and detachable table to help accommodate patients of all sizes. SIGNA Hero is also equipped with AIR Recon DL image reconstruction. The eco-friendly system is also capable of lowering helium usage by up to 67%, according to GE Healthcare.

The Revolution Apex CT platform was also introduced in November. The modular CT system enables hardware scalability to add service lines. The CT’s Gemstone Clarity Detector lets users update service lines from a 40-mm detector and 0.28-second rotation speed up to 160-mm detector and 0.23-second rotation speed. Effortless Workflow uses AI to automate much of the workflow.

Pharmaceutical diagnostics proceeds rose 13.3% to $2 billion.

Last May, GE announced it was acquiring Zionexa, an innovator of in-vivo and oncology and neurology biomarkers to enable personalized care. In addition to a pipeline of biomarkers, GE gained the FDA-approved Cerianna PET imaging agent, an adjunct to biopsy for detecting estrogen receptor positive lesions to inform treatment selection for recurrent or metastatic breast cancer. GE brought aboard Zionexa’s 24 employees in France to the segment. At the time, the company also hired 70 new dedicated employees to the Marlborough, Mass., pharmaceutical diagnostics team.

“Making Cerianna more widely available is an important moment for cancer patients and a significant step forward for molecular imaging,” Dr. Hannah M. Linden, Breast Medical oncologist, UW Medicine, University of Washington Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, told the press. “We test ER expression in a metastatic biopsy once at the beginning of the patient’s journey and we make decisions all along—when to give chemotherapy, when to use endocrine therapy, whether or not to use targeted agents—based on that one measurement.”

Last August, GE Healthcare began collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS), offering its AI-based imaging applications and Edison Health Services on AWS. The move aims to help healthcare providers transition from traditional hospital care delivery models to a more virtual, distributed, and decentralized model.

“As the world moves towards a more virtualized and distributed care delivery model with home care, remote patient management, and increased use of AI, radiologists and other clinicians need easy access to data that is seamlessly integrated, aggregated, and visualized in applications and services across modalities and within their existing workflows,” Amit Phadnis, GE Healthcare’s chief digital officer, told the press. “By doing this at scale, we are helping to drive clinical outcomes and achieving our goals of transforming healthcare to be more efficient and personalized.”

$18.01 Billion ($80.55 Billion)
Prior Fiscal: $19.9 Billion
Percentage Change: -10%
No. of Employees: 47,000 (174,000 total)

It is said “politics makes for strange bedfellows.” Perhaps the same is true of pandemics. For what other reason might a major automobile manufacturer partner with a leading medical device firm on the production of ventilators? While seeming like an odd pairing, the industrial couple announced—at the end of March 2020—they were committed to producing 50,000 simplified ventilators by July 8.

The machines were in high demand at the start of the pandemic as they were indicated for severe patients suffering from the COVID-19 virus. The units being produced were a design licensed from Airon, a Melbourne, Fla.-based manufacturer of non-invasive and invasive ventilation solutions including CPAP. The typical price for such a ventilator would run approximately $7,000, which is inexpensive when compared to more sophisticated units that would be priced at $20,000 or more. Still, even those prices were better than the inflated numbers caused by panic-induced bidding by states and healthcare facilities to try to secure the much-needed technologies. That number was cited as $40,000 per device or more by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Several weeks after the announced partnership, it was reported the pair had signed an agreement with the U.S. government to produce the 50,000 ventilators at a price tag of $336 million—approximately $6,720 per unit. The agreement was made under the Defense Production Act. Ford said the manufacture of the ventilators was being done at cost; GM, who was involved in a similar arrangement with Ventec Life Systems, made a similar claim regarding their deal.

The deal was the second such contract for GE with the U.S. government. Earlier in that same week in April, it was announced the organization had agreed to produce 2,410 units for $64.1 million. That arrangement was part of a Department of Health and Human Services contract that involved six other firms—Hillrom, Medtronic, ResMed, Vyaire, Hamilton, and Zoll—besides GE in order to address the urgent need for ventilators.

On Aug. 28, 2020, Ford shipped its final unit, completing its commitment to produce 50,000 units. The Michigan factory, which had been converted for the task, was to return to auto parts. While the effort was momentous, delays in the production timeline were attributed to the introduction of new suppliers necessary to address the increased volume.

Undoubtedly, this was the type of effort Kieran Murphy, president and CEO of GE Healthcare, was making reference to in his statement on March 19 regarding the contribution the company would make in the fight against COVID-19. “To help address this global challenge, we have increased our manufacturing capacity and output of equipment—including CTs, ultrasound devices, mobile X-ray systems, patient monitors and ventilators—important in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 patients, while taking steps to ensure safe operations for our employees.”

Ventilators represented just one example of the company’s commitment to providing solutions to care providers who desperately needed supplies to combat the virus. In April, the organization introduced its Mural Virtual Care Solution, which offered hospitals a view of patients who were on ventilators. The system could also offer insight on patients who were at risk of deterioration. Not only did this offering provide for comprehensive information on those patients, but it did so at a central location so the data could be reviewed while maintaining a safe distance to help prevent greater infection risks.

“Now more than ever we need to manage a greater number of ventilated patients with limited resources. Mural Virtual Care on Microsoft Azure allows for remote management and surveillance of ventilated patients at scale,” said Microsoft Global chief medical officer Dr. David Rhew.

Another product tied to the fight against coronavirus was its Thoracic Care Suite, which was described as a collection of eight artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms from Lunit INSIGHT CXR to help alleviate clinical strain due to COVID-19. Used to analyze chest X-rays, the system highlights abnormalities for radiologists to review, including pneumonia and acute respiratory distress.

ANALYST INSIGHTS: While not overly exciting in its portfolio moves, GE Healthcare is quietly executing its innovation strategy to enhance its core imaging businesses. Investments in new products (VScan Air) and AI solutions in radiology platforms should allow them to continue to maintain their marketshare.

—Dave Sheppard, Co-Founder and Managing Director, MedWorld Advisors

In November, GE Healthcare announced another AI-based solution to aid clinicians treating COVID-19 patients. Part of its Critical Care Suite 2.0, this algorithm would help clinicians assess endotracheal tube (ETT) placements, a procedure performed on those patients requiring ventilation. According to GE, up to 25 percent of patients intubated outside of the OR have misplaced ETTs when reviewed on chest X-rays.

While the news around medical devices introduced to aid in the fight against the virus dominated headlines in 2020, GE Healthcare still offered other announcements that were noteworthy. The most significant was the completion of the sale of its BioPharma business to Danaher Corporation for $21.4 billion. The deal, which was final on the last day of Q1 2020, was first announced in February 2019. The unit provided equipment and software used for biopharmaceutical research. Upon transfer to Danaher, it was to be named Cytiva and would perform as a stand-alone company within the organization’s life sciences segment.

At the time of the announcement of the sale, Murphy said, “The BioPharma business has been a strong contributor to our success, and I am confident this agreement represents a great opportunity for our valued colleagues to flourish under the ownership of Danaher. GE Healthcare has unsurpassed scale and scope and we will continue to focus on our investments so that we deliver better outcomes and more capacity to a world striving for Precision Health.”

According to GE, in 2018, the Biopharma business contributed approximately $3 billion to the firm’s revenue total. The other portion of the Life Sciences segment, Pharmaceutical Diagnostics, remained as part of the GE Healthcare unit.

GE Healthcare was involved in another divestiture later in the year when it announced the sale of its U.S. radiopharmacy network to Radioisotope Life Sciences (RLS). As a result of the transaction, RLS was propelled to the top of the list of largest pure molecular imaging focused firms in the U.S. Molecular imaging products from GE Healthcare would still be offered through the radiopharmacy as a result of a 10-year distribution partnership agreement.

While GE was saying goodbye to substantial assets, it also welcomed a significant acquisition late in 2020. Seeking to increase the performance of its CT capabilities, the company purchased Swedish startup Prismatic Sensors AB, which had been focused on photon counting CT technology (PCCT). PCCT has the potential to further expand the clinical capabilities of traditional CT, including the visualization of minute details of organ structures, improved tissue characterization, more accurate material density measurement (or quantification), and lower radiation dose. CT technology is used to detect cancer, heart conditions, and other diseases.

Undoubtedly, the moves made in 2020 were accomplished to allow GE Healthcare to shed non-focus areas, while bolstering healthcare segments it viewed as opportunities. How that impacts the firm’s financials going forward remains to be seen, but in 2020, the organization saw an approximately 10 percent decrease from its 2019 figures. Within the parent GE, that was the second largest percentage decrease behind Aviation (down 33 percent).

Perhaps the positive takeaway with regard to the double-digit drop was the fact it could likely be attributed to the loss of revenue from the purged BioPharma unit, as this segment only contributed $830 million to the organization’s bottom line. In contrast, BioPharma provided $3.3 billion to GE Healthcare’s revenue figure in 2019. Even keeping that figure flat in 2020 would have resulted in a gain in total revenue for the company in its latest fiscal year.

Picking up some of the loss, the main unit of GE Healthcare—Healthcare Systems—enjoyed an increase in revenue of nearly $1 billion, growing from $14.6 billion in 2019 to $15.4 billion in 2020. Many of the gains were attributed to the increased demand for products related to the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

The remaining segment—Pharmaceutical Diagnostics—shrank by about $200 million to finish at $1.8 billion in revenue for the year. Reduced demand in the first half of 2020 contributed to the decline during the fiscal period.

With its focus on the future to achieve growth, GE Healthcare was aggressive in new product launches, having introduced more than 40 products within fiscal 2020. Most of these products involved imaging solutions for diagnostic applications. There were a number of highlights among them.

In support of the battle against breast cancer, the firm announced the clearance of its Pristina Serena Bright, a contrast-enhanced mammography solution for biopsy. The product enables a breast biopsy exam to be performed with the same mammography equipment, with the same staff, and in the same room as the screening or diagnostic mammogram.

GE Healthcare’s shatterproof polymer +PLUSPAK Pharmacy Bulk Package was approved in the U.S. for use with the macrocyclic gadolinium-based MRI contrast agent, Clariscan. The combination of Clariscan in a +PLUSPAK offers MRI departments a variety of ways in which they can improve safety and workflow efficiency, as the polymer bottle reduces risk of breakage and injury from broken glass. According to GE, 16 percent of sharps injuries in healthcare settings are associated with glass bottles.

The company also gained FDA approval to have its Clariscan MRI contrast agent available in pre-filled syringes. Another safety measure to address injuries from broken glass, this offering was also provided with color-coded volume labels to allow for easy identification of the required patient-specific volume (10, 15, or 20 mL). Further, its 2D data matrix contains scannable key information to be uploaded onto electronic medical systems, reducing the risk of manual data entry errors and helping to further increase workflow efficiency at medical centers.

Featuring AI algorithms to support auto recognition, the Voluson SWIFT is an ultrasound system designed to expand diagnostic capabilities and improve patient outcomes for women’s health clinicians. It features an embedded AI platform, including the SonoLyst application—a fully integrated AI tool that recognizes the 20 views recommended by the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology mid-trimester practice guidelines for fetal imaging, optimizing the scan workflow by 73 percent when compared to manual 2D workflow. The Scan Assistant tool guides clinicians through protocols and reduces scanning time by up to 45 percent. SonoBiometry measurements are 38 percent faster with the unit. Further, the platform can help reduce keystrokes by 78 percent when capturing desired planes and measurements of the fetal central nervous system.

The company gained 510(k) clearance for its Ultra Edition package on Vivid cardiovascular ultrasound systems, which includes new features based on AI that enable clinicians to acquire faster, more repeatable exams consistently. It provides increased efficiencies to the scanning process for reduced exam time through up to 80 percent fewer clicks, 99 percent accuracy, and less inter-operator variability.

In November, GE announced its SIGNA 7.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner had gained U.S. FDA 510(k) clearance. According to the firm, the system was the world’s most powerful FDA-cleared MRI device available at the time of the announcement. With a magnet approximately five times more powerful than most clinical systems, the SIGNA 7.0T could image anatomy, function, metabolism, and microvasculature in the brain and joints with high resolution and detail. The system also features the organization’s latest SIGNAWorks software platform with state-of-the-art applications, such as deep learning-based tools like AIR x brain for automated slice positioning and Silent MR imaging, enabling seamless protocol translation between GE MR systems.

$19.94 Billion ($95B total)
Prior Fiscal: $19.8 Billion
Percentage Change: +1%
No. of Employees: 56,000 (205,000 total)

GE is a company in transition, perhaps more so than any other in the 2020 top company list. The firm had been a Wall Street “blue chip” for decades, reflective of what a dependable company is—a safe investment. Contrast that against a more recent time as the firm has fought to remain out of “junk bond status” for those same investors. While many pointed to former CEO Jeff Immelt as the most responsible party for the firm’s fall, blame is hardly a concern for the current leadership. Instead, they are working on resolving the company’s bevy of financial concerns.

“Deleveraging” seemed to be the theme for the mothership in 2019 as the company made several moves to directly address the substantial debt it had accumulated. GE was able to reduce debt for both the Industrial and Capital segments by $7 billion net each. Further, the organization completed a spin-off and subsequent merger of its Transportation unit with Wabtec, gaining approximately $6 billion in total proceeds as a result of its exited stake. GE was also responsible for the market’s largest secondary offering in 2019 when it shed its control over Baker Hughes, for which it netted almost $3 billion. Among other accomplishments GE completed in 2019 was a $5 billion debt tender, changes to pension benefit in the Industrial business expected to reduce debt by $5 to $6 billion, sale of GECAS’ PK AirFinance aviation lending platform, and a $27 billion asset reduction in GE Capital.

The Healthcare unit wasn’t immune from the firm’s selling spree strategy. The entire business had been the subject of selling rumors and was predicted to be spun out from GE to form a standalone, medically focused entity. Instead, the Healthcare segment saw its BioPharma business jettisoned—a deal announced in February 2019. Danaher was the buying partner in the deal, which was valued at approximately $21 billion.

“Today’s transaction is a pivotal milestone. It demonstrates that we are executing on our strategy by taking thoughtful and deliberate action to reduce leverage and strengthen our balance sheet,” explained H. Lawrence Culp Jr., GE’s chairman and CEO at the time of the deal’s announcement. “We are retaining full flexibility for growth and strategic optionality with one of the world’s leading healthcare companies, and we are pleased that our BioPharma colleagues will join a strong, established team at Danaher. A more focused portfolio is the right structure for GE, and we have many options for maximizing shareholder value along the way.”

The move was reflective of the company’s goals in 2019, which were outlined by Culp in his Letter to Shareholders in the company’s latest annual report. In it, he explained there were two strategic priorities for the year: improve the firm’s financial position and strengthen its businesses. How exactly shedding a part of the GE Healthcare Life Sciences unit that, in 2018, generated revenues of almost $3 billion can be seen as strengthening the business was not specifically explained. It does, however, seem to enable the remaining GE Healthcare unit to focus more exclusively on the majority of its business in imaging, monitoring, and diagnostics. Further, the related unit of Pharmaceutical Diagnostics, which was also a part of the Life Sciences segment, was retained by the Healthcare segment.

The move ultimately put to rest any further whispers of GE divesting the Healthcare business. According to the Milwaukee Business Journal, Edward Jones analyst Jeff Windau said, “With the execution of this deal, it appears that the IPO of GE’s healthcare business, at least in the near term, will not be pursued.”

ANALYST INSIGHTS: Helpful for GE Healthcare was the divestiture of the GE Life Sciences business to Danaher. This means that 1) GE Healthcare is a primary profit driver within the greater GE business; and 2) the cash received from the GE Life Sciences sale should allow for the ability for focused investments (internally and externally).

—Dave Sheppard, Co-Founder and Managing Director, MedWorld Advisors

That’s likely good news for shareholders of the organization as the unit had been one of the stronger performers for the company in recent years, showing modest, but consistent, gains year over year. Between 2017 and 2019, revenue increased by a billion dollars; combined with Aviation and Renewable Energy, the trio of businesses helped alleviate the substantial impact from the losses experienced by the Power unit, which reported over $10 billion in lost annual revenue over the same time period.

Specifically, in 2019, Healthcare pulled in $19.9 billion in total segment revenues. While the growth over 2018’s $19.8 billion was not substantial, the consistency of the unit is likely a welcome contrast to the financial hardships the firm has faced in recent years. Revenue from the U.S. has remained relatively flat since 2017, generating $8.4 billion in ’17, $8.6 billion in ’18, and $8.5 billion in ’19. Non-U.S. regions, however, mark the opportunity for growth with Asia being the most active source for it. The region recorded $5.4 billion in revenue in 2019 versus $5.2 in 2018, which was up from $4.9 billion the year prior. Europe tacked on another $4.1 billion, which was down slightly from $4.2 billion in 2018. The Americas, however, made up for that loss with its growth from $1 billion in 2018 to $1.1 billion in ’19. Finally, the Middle East and Africa remained flat as it accounted for $0.8 billion during both fiscals.

By segment, the BioPharma-less Life Sciences posted a gain over 2018 by about $400 million, seeing revenue in 2019 blossom to $5.3 billion. With a portion of the division sold off to Danaher, the remainder is comprised of Bioprocess and Pharmaceutical diagnostics, both viewed as growth areas by GE.

Complementing Life Sciences is the much larger Healthcare Systems division, which saw a decrease in 2019 ($14.6 billion) compared to 2018’s $14.9 billion. Still, it was just ahead of 2017’s $14.5 billion. While GE expects this segment to enjoy growth long-term, it did face challenges caused by market-specific political and economic cycles. This unit also welcomed the Healthcare Equipment Finance (HEF) business from GE’s Capital segment. The move was effective as of Jan. 1, 2019, and its revenue contributions were reported within the unit.

Looking to future revenue growth opportunities, GE Healthcare demonstrated its commitment to artificial intelligence (AI) as a driver for both enhanced patient, as well as, corporate health. It made several announcements of new launches and capabilities around its Edison System during 2019, which the firm launched late in the prior year.

The Edison System, named after one of GE’s co-founders, was developed to aid hospitals in developing algorithms and managing data for imaging and precision medicine. “Edison provides clinicians with an integrated digital platform, combining diverse data sets from across modalities, vendors, healthcare networks, and life sciences settings,” explained Kieran Murphy, GE Healthcare’s CEO at the time of the announcement. “Applications built on Edison will include the latest data processing technologies to enable clinicians to make faster, more informed decisions to improve patient outcomes.”

In 2019, GE announced a number of expansion efforts to increase the capabilities of AI systems leveraging the Edison platform. One such launch was the Edison Developer Program, which was designed to accelerate the adoption and impact of intelligent applications and developer services across health systems. Its intent was to expand the existing Edison ecosystem of leading researchers, technology providers, and academic institutions who develop, manage, secure, and distribute advanced applications, services, and AI algorithms.

“We introduced Edison just one year ago at RSNA to help health providers take advantage of data in new and significant ways,” said Murphy. “With the introduction of the Edison Developer Program, and a suite of new intelligent applications and smart devices powered by Edison, we are building on that promise as we continue to work with partners to realize our collective goal of advancing the future of health.”

Just weeks earlier, the organization announced it was releasing the Edison Datalogue, which was an enterprise data management solution for the AI system that connected data systems, devices, applications, and clinicians to provide a more holistic view of data. With patient data often spread across multiple systems, departments, and even facilities, combining that data is virtually impossible without such a solution to do it automatically. According to GE, research indicates a solution like Edison Datalogue can help increase clinical productivity by up to 30 percent, saving up to $1 million annually through consolidation and up to $50,000 per year in collaboration costs.

The organization also announced it was bringing the Edison system to China. It signed a Memorandum of Understanding with five local software development companies, marking the start of a strategic partnership and the successful introduction of the AI solution to the Asian country.

Further expanding its impact, GE partnered with the American College of Radiology (ACR) AI-LAB, allowing ACR members and other radiology professionals access to develop and deploy algorithms across hospitals and research centers nationally. The firm also teamed with Fujitsu Australia, Macquarie University, and Macquarie Medical Imaging on a research collaboration to diagnose and monitor brain aneurysms on scans faster and more efficiently using AI. Working with UC San Francisco, the company gained FDA clearance of a device with AI algorithms embedded within it to help radiologists review a suspected pneumothorax (i.e., a type of collapsed lung).

Of particular note was the company’s presence at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting, where it leveraged the event to announce the launch of more than 30 new imaging intelligent applications and smart devices. Among the new offerings:

AIR Recon DL is an Edison application providing True Fidelity images. It is a deep-learning MRI reconstruction technology application designed to improve signal-to-noise and image sharpness and enable shorter scan times.

The Edison Open AI Orchestrator, another announced product, was designed to orchestrate AI at scale for imaging workflows. It simplifies the implementation, deployment, support, and scaling of multiple AI applications including from partners iCAD and MaxQ.

Revolution Maxima with AI-Based Auto Positioning is a powerful, high performing, and reliable CT that maximizes every step of the CT workflow, from referral to report. Enabled with AI-based Auto Positioning technology, Revolution Maxima uses real-time depth sensing technology in order to generate a 3D model of a patient’s body to pinpoint the center of the scan range and automatically align it to the isocenter of the bore.

OEC Touch for OEC Elite CFD features a new control panel located right on the C-arm. During a variety of clinical procedures, C-arm technicians often move back-and-forth between the C-arm. While these movements are necessary, they can disrupt surgical flow and cause inefficiencies and block the surgeon’s view of the images during procedures. The new control panel is designed to eliminate the need to move to a separate workstation and reduce disruption during surgery.

Embo ASSIST with Virtual Injection is an Edison application designed to help clinicians perform complex embolization procedures. This application is designed to allow clinicians to analyze the vasculature and simulate injections dynamically to help determine the embolization strategy to avoid embolizing healthy tissues in the brain or prostate with just one click.

While a major focus for GE in 2019 was centered around its AI innovations and technologies, they demonstrated an interest in other “next-generation” healthcare segments as well. In December, a partnership was announced with Advanced Solutions Life Sciences (ASLS) to explore opportunities involving the regeneration of tissue. Specifically, the two organizations entered into a strategic R&D and distribution partnership that sets out to personalize tissue regeneration.

Bioprinted tissues are small in size and die quickly, due to an inability to engineer small blood vessels—the body’s supply network. ASLS’ patented Angiomics technology enables bioprinted microvessels to self-assemble into functional capillary beds, which deliver nutrients, oxygen, and hormones to the 3D tissue model and remove waste. This partnership would allow life scientists and tissue engineers to quickly design, build, and image living, vascularized 3D tissues in a single, agile process.

GE further demonstrated its commitment to advancing technologies for the future with the announcement of the opening of an open-access lab at Alderley Park’s Mereside Campus, the U.K.’s largest single-site life sciences campus. The facility was developed to help small and medium-sized enterprises accelerate their science through access to advanced technologies, services, and training from GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

In another collaboration, GE announced it was working with Premier to develop a model for a one-stop breast cancer diagnostic center that would give women in the United States same-day results. The idea for the facility comes from the One-Stop Clinic at the Gustave Roussy Institute in France, which was founded in 2004 and offers a coordinated patient journey from the initial appointment through diagnosis and treatment plan in one place. With a multimodality approach that includes the GE Healthcare Senographe Pristina mammography system, SenoBright Contrast Enhanced Spectral Mammography (CESM), and biopsy, the program has proven to be successful, earning an 80 percent patient satisfaction rating.

In December, GE provided information on three more joint efforts with companies on leading technology ventures. It is collaborating with Formlabs, a Massachusetts-based manufacturer of advanced, affordable 3D printers to help clinicians easily and quickly print anatomical models at the point of care when coupled with GE Healthcare’s Advantage Workstation to prepare 3D CT or MRI data. In the robotic surgery space, GE was an investor in CMR Surgical—a U.K.-based developer of a surgical robotic system called Versius. The company also invested in Decisio Health, a Houston, Texas-based software company that specializes in clinical surveillance, to expand into the virtual care space and revolutionize patient monitoring.

COVID-19 Consequences

Q1 2020 Revenue: $4.73 Billion
Q1 2019 Revenue: $4.68 Billion
Percentage Change: +1%

As a leading provider of medical technology and equipment, many of GE Healthcare’s products are literally on the front line in the effort in the fight against COVID-19. From ventilators to diagnostics, the firm’s devices have aided essential healthcare professionals in their treatment of patients.

One of the bigger stories of the COVID-19 battle has been the efforts by companies outside of the medical device sector hearing the call for greater manufacturing power and responding. One such tale involved GE and automaker Ford. In April, the organizations signed a $336 million contract with the federal government under the Defense Production Act to produce 50,000 ventilators. The deal marked the second ventilator agreement GE had made with the federal government, having settled earlier in the week on a $64.1 million price for 2,410 units.

In first quarter filings, GE reported total revenue at $20.5 billion, which marked an 8 percent decrease compared to 2019. The firm’s three non-healthcare segments all suffered declines in year over year revenue. Healthcare, however, posted a 7 percent increase in orders over first quarter 2019 with profit growing by over $100 million. The company attributed the gains to “surge demand for products used in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19.”

According to a CNBC article, the company indicated it was anticipating even greater losses in the second quarter. GE CEO Larry Culp stated they were reviewing potential areas for cutting costs of more than $2 billion and also expected to couple that with cash preservation efforts to retain approximately $3 billion to ease the blow from the virus.

AT A GLANCE

Rank: #3 (Last year: #3)

$19.78 Billion ($122B total)

Prior Fiscal: $19.02 Billion

Percentage Change: +4%

No. of Employees: 53,800 (283,000 total)

Global Headquarters: Chicago, Ill.

KEY EXECUTIVES

H. Lawrence Culp, Jr. Chairman and CEO, GE

Jamie S. Miller Sr. VP and CFO, GE

Kieran P. Murphy, Sr. VP, GE; President and CEO, GE Healthcare

Monish Patolawala, CFO, GE Healthcare

Amit Phadnis, Chief Digital Officer, GE Healthcare

Jan Makela, President and CEO, Global Services, GE Healthcare

Thomas Westrick, VP and Chief Quality Officer, GE Healthcare

Greg Gibbons, Chief Communications Officer, GE Healthcare

Terri Bresenham, Chief Innovation Officer, GE Healthcare

Ehren Powell, Chief Information Officer, GE Healthcare

Katya Kruglova, VP, Human Resources, GE Healthcare

Michael McAlevey, VP, General Counsel and Business Development, GE Healthcare

James W. Borzi, VP and Chief Supply Chain Officer, GE Healthcare

Anders Wold, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Clinical Care Solutions

Tom McGuinness, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Imaging

Emmanuel Ligner, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Life Sciences

Laurent Dubois, CEO, GE Healthcare Partners

Lee Cooper, President and CEO, GE Healthcare U.S. and Canada

Farid Fezoua, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Africa

Luiz Verzegnassi, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Latin America

Rachel Duan, President and CEO, GE Healthcare China

Soichiro Tada, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Japan

Nalinikanth (Nal) Gollagunta, President and CEO, GE Healthcare India and South Asia

Elie Chaillot, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Eastern Growth Markets

Catherine Estrampes, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Europe

Some had thought it possible that by the time this report on the GE Healthcare unit was being read, the firm would have been spun out as its own, standalone company. As it turns out, that timeline may have been anticipated a little prematurely. Due to several factors, GE Healthcare—to date—still remains a part of its conglomerate parent company, although no longer in its entirety as it was constructed at the start of 2018.

In late June 2018, it was announced by then-GE CEO John Flannery that GE Healthcare would be launched from the mothership to fend for itself as an independent entity. The unit’s split made sense from the standpoint—it was financially strong, provided an array of products, and would potentially thrive as a business with a single focus, catering exclusively to the technology needs of medicine. At the same time, GE would generate cash from the disposition of 20 percent of its interest in the firm to help reduce debt, while providing the remaining 80 percent to the parent company’s shareholders.

In a company statement, Kieran Murphy, president and CEO of GE Healthcare, who would have remained in the position to lead the new spun-out firm, said, “GE Healthcare’s vision is to drive more individualized, precise, and effective patient outcomes. As an independent global healthcare business, we will have greater flexibility to pursue future growth opportunities, react quickly to changes in the industry, and invest in innovation. We will build on strong customer demand for integrated precision health solutions and great technology with digital and analytics capabilities as we enter our next chapter.”

Or, at least, that was the plan. Unfortunately, as is said of best laid plans…

On Oct. 1, 2018, GE announced it had instead decided to spin out Flannery and replaced him with H. Lawrence Culp Jr., former CEO and president of Danaher. Culp had held his former role from 2001 to 2014. During his tenure, he led a number of strategic acquisitions and divestitures—perhaps the experience GE’s board valued given the firm’s intent to slim itself down. Further, according to the statement issued by GE at the time of the personnel change, while at Danaher, Culp saw the company’s market capitalization and revenues grow five-fold. Given the struggles the firm had been experiencing, GE certainly needed someone at the helm who had a proven history of positive financial experience.

The CEO swap generated immediate speculation on whether or not the GE Healthcare standalone launch would still take place. Jim Corridore, a research equity analyst at CFRA, told CNBC that Culp may not have the same plan for the healthcare segment. Meanwhile, corporate spokeswoman for GE, Jennifer Fox, assured, “Today’s news does not change what’s happening at GE Healthcare and it plans to continue working toward separation from GE.”

Not so fast, Fox.

By mid-November, plans were in a state of flux once again, Culp revealed in a discussion with CNBC’s David Faber. The CEO told the financial journalist and market news analyst that the Healthcare unit was a “tremendous” franchise and the parent company could “preserve our tax-free spin status while selling up to 49.9 percent” of the segment, significantly more than earlier statements, which put the percentage around 20. During the same interview, Culp revealed his former employer, Danaher, would “love” to own GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences business.

ANALYST INSIGHTS: The good news for GE Healthcare is that it continues to consistently move forward as a profitable business unit within GE. The bad news for GE Healthcare is that it continues to be a part of GE. GE continues to debate spinning off GE Healthcare as a separate business—via IPO. If this happens, it will be a positive for GE Healthcare as it will unleash the opportunity for strategic investments for its future growth. Otherwise, GE Healthcare will be challenged to keep up with its competitors for the long-term.

—Dave Sheppard, Co-Founder and Managing Director, MedWorld Advisors

Still further fueling the rabid speculation over what the firm was up to, in the latter half of December, it was revealed GE had filed a “confidential IPO” for its healthcare unit. While the public filing was expected for the following (2019) spring, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Karen Ubelhart estimated the enterprise value of the spinoff at $65 billion to $70 billion.

Finally, in late February 2019, as if in an effort to put to rest all the gossip and ballyhoo regarding the future of the Healthcare business unit, GE announced it was selling its biopharmaceutical business to Danaher. While the deal was likely not a surprise to anyone who had been keeping tabs on the comments made by Culp in the year prior, the transaction immediately called into question the further divestiture of any additional aspects of the medical technology segment. Culp, however, addressed any uncertainty regarding the public offering by stating the IPO was now “unlikely.”

The $21.4 billion deal with Danaher represented the sale of 15 percent of GE Healthcare’s business. The unit manufactures equipment and special resins that help pharma companies discover and mass produce biopharmaceuticals intended to fight autoimmune diseases. It also aids vaccine developers and researchers explore immunotherapy, according to GE.

Not included in the transaction was the Pharmaceutical Diagnostics unit, which develops contrast media for radiologists. Retaining that segment of the Life Sciences business makes sense since the media is used in combination with GE’s computed tomography, positron emission tomography, and magnetic resonance scanners.

While the spinout of GE Healthcare from the parent firm would have certainly been the biggest M&A move for the business in 2018, it certainly wasn’t the only one making headlines during the year. In April, the healthcare business sold its IT unit to Veritas Capital for $1.05 billion. The assets comprising the IT segment consisted of Enterprise Financial Management (Revenue-Cycle, Centricity Business), Ambulatory Care Management (Centricity Practice Solution), and Workforce Management (formerly API Healthcare).

In the news release announcing the sale, which closed two months later in June, Murphy said, “We’re confident this business will flourish under Veritas Capital, while GE Healthcare will continue to significantly invest in core digital solutions, such as smart diagnostics, connected devices, AI, and enterprise imaging, that will drive precision health for our customers. We will continue to lead in data analytics, command centers, advanced visualization, and image management tools to create better customer and patient outcomes.”

Earning two spots on GE Healthcare’s divestiture dance card, cancer diagnostics firm Inspirata waltzed away with both Omnyx in late January and Caradigm in mid-June; neither sale’s financial details were disclosed. Omnyx provides a digital platform to enable pathologists worldwide to work and collaborate to improve cancer diagnostics. Meanwhile, Caradigm offers a variety of population health solutions, including services based on data control, analytics, and care coordination and patient engagement.

Perhaps in another move to rid itself of assets deemed to be outside its dedicated focus on specific therapeutic segments, during the last quarter of 2018, GE Healthcare sold off all shares of NeoGenomics, a genetics-testing firm. It first sold shares in November valued at almost $70 million and followed that up with a final sale of all remaining shares in December—a move that returned $130 million to the company’s coffers.

That financial windfall was in addition to the $19.78 billion in revenues GE Healthcare saw in 2018—up 4 percent over the prior year—which represented a profit of $3.7 billion for the parent firm. The clear majority of that revenue was generated by the organization’s Healthcare Systems sub-segment, which contributed $14.9 billion in 2018, compared to $14.5 billion a year earlier. The other sub-segment that comprises GE Healthcare is the Life Sciences portion, which put $4.9 billion toward the revenue total (up from $4.6 billion in 2017). Given the divestiture of a significant piece of the Life Sciences unit to Danaher, this number will most certainly decrease in 2019.

When looking at GE Healthcare’s worldwide business, the figures reveal while the U.S. is the largest revenue generator compared to other regions, when compared to the total for the rest of the world, it represents the minority portion. Non-U.S. revenues accounted for 57 percent of the company’s overall figure, which translates to $11.2 billion (56 percent in 2017; $10.6 billion). To that number, Asia contributes the greatest portion at $5.2 billion, followed closely by Europe at $4.1 billion (compared to $4.9 and $3.9 billion respectively in 2017). The Americas ($1.0 billion) and Middle East/Africa ($0.9 billion) round out the 57 percent, each flat versus 2017. In contrast, the U.S. has a revenue figure of $8.6 billion, which was a slight increase over year prior ($8.4 billion).

Looking ahead, GE Healthcare is positioning itself rather well to serve the emerging trends in the medical treatment space—that is, the implementation of analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in the clinical space. To that end, the firm developed a next-generation intelligence platform called Edison. The intent of this initiative is to enable smart product and new applications to be built on the platform. In doing so, Edison helps to accelerate the development and adoption of AI technology for the medical space. The solution will not only allow GE Healthcare to develop new “smart” technologies—clinical partners can use Edison to develop algorithms. Further, technology firms can team with GE Healthcare to introduce data processing advancements to medical devices and applications.

“There’s a lot of hidden meaning in the deep data, but it takes a significant sophistication to extract the value,” said Dr. Rachael Callcut, associate professor of surgery at UCSF, a surgeon at UCSF Health, director of data science for the Center for Digital Health Innovation, and a partner in the development of Critical Care Suite (one of several new healthcare solutions developed on Edison). “AI gives us an opportunity to see patterns that we don’t see and change the way we care for patients, which can ultimately improve outcomes.”

The aforementioned Critical Care Suite is designed to identify cases with the critical condition of pneumothorax at the point of care to enable prioritization of image review, according to an announcement made in late November 2018 regarding several new offerings all developed with the aid of Edison. AIRx, an AI-based, automated workflow tool for MRI brain scanning designed to increase consistency and productivity, was another. In addition, CT Smart Subscription provides continuous access to the latest CT software, extending the lifecycle of a device and making it more valuable over time. Rounding out the announced tools was an Automated Lesion Segmentation solution that helps eliminate the need for the user to measure lesions manually, by segmenting an identified breast, thyroid, or liver lesion and automatically providing a trace of the lesion and corresponding area.

“Edison provides clinicians with an integrated digital platform, combining diverse data sets from across modalities, vendors, healthcare networks and life sciences settings,” said GE Healthcare’s Murphy. “Applications built on Edison will include the latest data processing technologies to enable clinicians to make faster, more informed decisions to improve patient outcomes.”

Further illustrating its data/IT-centric focus, GE announced near the start of 2018 that it was teaming with Roche on a digital diagnostics platform for oncology and critical care treatment. The goal of the joint venture is to develop an industry-first digital platform to support clinical decisions by providing workflow solutions and apps. The system would leverage advanced analytics to enable the integration and analysis of in-vivo and in-vitro data, patient records, medical best practices, real time monitoring, and the latest research outcomes.

“This is the first time that two major players in healthcare have combined advanced analytics with in-vivo and in-vitro diagnostics to this degree. We believe this alliance will help accelerate the delivery of data-driven precision health for customers, patients, and the healthcare industry,” said Murphy.

Perhaps recognizing the leadership position GE had taken in the implementation of AI in the care space, NHS enlisted the company to build a centralized healthcare command center. The facility will be located at the Bradford Royal Infirmary, which is a teaching hospital in the U.K. A first-of-its-kind location in Europe, the center will utilize AI to transform how care is delivered and organized across the 800-bed hospital. Specifically, it will help to reduce unnecessary time spent in the hospital after a patient is medically ready to leave; increase the proportion of patients who arrive and are admitted, transferred, or discharged from A&E (i.e., the emergency department) within four hours; and help ensure patients are always treated in the wards best suited to manage their care. The center will be based on similar facilities in the U.S. and Canada, including The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and Humber River Hospital in Toronto.

Catering to another rapidly growing trend in healthcare, the firm teamed with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to accelerate the use of 3D printing in patient care. Specifically, the effort is seeking to reduce the time it takes for radiologists to create 3D-printed models and prosthetics from hours to minutes. The research agreement sees GE Healthcare providing software and work stations, while the VA will offer input on its use of the technology; the VA was previously using 3D software not intended for medical use.

“We are delighted to partner with the Veterans Administration to accelerate 3D printing in healthcare,” Terri Bresenham, chief innovation officer for GE Healthcare, said in a statement announcing the endeavor. “This partnership will result in significant innovation for the growing application of additive manufacturing in medicine while advancing GE Healthcare toward its mission to improve patient outcomes and enable precision healthcare.”

$19.1 Billion ($122B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 52,000 (313,000 total)

Talk about a fall from grace.

Nearly two decades ago, GE was at the top of its game, brandishing a $410 billion market valuation and a share price around $34. It was America’s most valuable corporation back then, due largely to the genius of former Chairman/CEO Jack Welch—Fortune’s “Manager of the Century” in 1999—who increased the company’s overall worth 28 times during his tenure and added (mistakenly, perhaps in retrospect) a financial services unit to GE’s already multifarious repertoire.

Diversification into commercial lending and leasing, insurance, and financial consulting initially served GE well: By the end of Welch’s reign in 2001, GE Capital accounted for nearly half of the industrial giant’s total business, and the company was outperforming rivals like Mitsubishi, Koninklijke Philips N.V., and Siemens.

Then came the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. GE’s aviation leasing business took a significant hit as air demand contracted considerably, but lending limits, special financing, and cross-collateralization loans helped minimize the damage. The company wasn’t so lucky during the 2008 financial crisis, though: Dwindling cash and a weak balance sheet forced GE to seek a bailout from the federal government and billionaire businessman Warren Buffett.

With the Great Recession now a distant memory amid the skyrocketing stock indexes and economies worldwide, GE remains curiously mired in a prolonged meltdown that has obliterated more than $100 billion of shareholder wealth and reduced its market value by 62 percent since its 2000 peak. The company’s former cash cow, GE Capital, is now practically worthless and the subject of federal investigations by both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Justice Department. Compounding GE’s woes last year was a dividend cut (only the second since the Great Depression), a downgraded credit rating, slumping share prices, and the largest pension deficit of any U.S. public company.

GE’s implosion continued in 2018 with shareholder and retiree lawsuits, massive job cuts (mostly in the Power division), weak sales of turbines and generators, and most recently, its removal from the Dow Jones Industrial Average (see sidebar, page 54).

“It’s like their sails are all torn when they’ve got the perfect wind,” William Blair & Co. analyst Nicholas Heymann, a former GE corporate auditor, told Bloomberg Businessweek in February. “It makes you wonder what’s next.”

ANALYST INSIGHTS: The good news for GE Healthcare is that GE has decided to spin off Healthcare into its own separate company. Similar to the process that Siemens Healthineers has gone through recently, this will allow GE Healthcare to have more flexibility in running its business and managing its portfolio. This will likely result in more acquisitions once the IPO is complete in 2019.

—Dave Sheppard, Co-Founder and Principal, MedWorld Advisors

Nobody knows for certain, of course, but Chairman/CEO John L. Flannery is doing his best to create a better future for the 126-year-old enterprise through the sale or spinoff of $20 million in GE businesses, including its iconic lightbulb division. He also announced plans in June 2018 to combine Aviation, Power, and Renewable Energy into a “high-tech” industrial company, divest GE’s stake in oil services company Baker Hughes, and spin off Healthcare into a standalone entity. The Transportation business, meanwhile, is merging with U.S. rail equipment manufacturer Wabtec Corp. in an $11.1 billion deal.

“When I first took stock of our portfolio, I saw a series of competitive businesses that were fundamentally strong. But they play in infrastructure industries that have experienced significant disruption—from globalization, digitization, shifting demands, and new players,” Flannery noted in GE’s 2017 annual report. “I concluded that we were running too many businesses at once to do them all justice. We had to admit we didn’t have the financial and management bandwidth to have so many large, global businesses in the open throttle position that they need to progress. We are narrowing our long-term focus to three key industries where our impact is greatest: aviation, health, and energy. We run competitive businesses with market-leading positions in each of these sectors, industries that are positioned for major long-term growth. We have our work cut out for us. There are things we need to fix. But we can. We know how to. And we will.”

Flannery wasn’t kidding about the difficulty of reversing GE’s fortunes: Total revenue slipped 1.3 percent last year to $122.1 billion and declared dividends fell 14.5 percent to $7.7 billion. Net earnings were down $5.8 billion, and shareholders’ return on equity sank 8.7 percent—a sobering regression from the 10.9 percent growth the company posted in 2016.

Moreover, total segment profit fell by more than half to $7.98 billion due to sizable losses in the Power, Oil & Gas, Transportation, Lighting, and Capital business segments. The latter franchise recorded the greatest loss (not surprising, given all its troubles), increasing its deficit more than five-fold to $6.76 billion in 2017. Profits also sank in Oil & Gas, down 84.1 percent to $220 million (from $1.4 billion in 2016); Power, contracting 45.3 percent to $2.78 billion; and Transportation, falling 22.5 percent to $824 million.

“When I look back on 2017, there’s no doubt: GE had a very tough year,” Flannery told investors in the annual report, nine months after he succeeded former Chairman and CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt in June 2017. “While most of our businesses delivered solid—and in the cases of Aviation and Healthcare, world-class—performances, our cash flow was challenging. We took significant charges at Capital and Power Conversion and made painful cuts to GE’s dividend and employment. We lost some of the intense focus on operations and rigorous execution that have been GE’s hallmarks for generations.”

ANALYST INSIGHTS: With GE Healthcare’s spin out, they will now have greater freedom to operate and provide greater patient facing products without worrying about the overhead associated with supporting the rest of the GE brand. This is a great phase for their medical device business and there should also be significant spin-outs of brands not core to the business. Exciting times ahead.

—Marissa K. Fayer, CEO and Founder, Health Equity for Women and HERHealthEQ

With the struggles of its legacy businesses—particularly Power, Oil & Gas, and Lighting—Flannery is wise to bank GE’s future on Aviation, Energy, and Healthcare, as those segments generated strong returns in 2017. Aviation increased sales 4.2 percent to $27.37 billion and grew margins by 100 basis points, while Renewable Energy expanded its profit 26 percent and overall sales 13.8 percent on the tailwinds of a burgeoning onshore wind market and energy cost reduction efforts.

Improved healthcare access in emerging markets and China, along with productivity-based technological solutions, helped boost 2017 Healthcare proceeds by 4.5 percent to $19.1 billion and profits by 9 percent to $3.44 billion, GE’s annual report indicates. Imaging and ultrasound solutions proved especially fruitful in emerging economies: The company, for example, expanded its market share in Egypt with the March 2017 deployment of its Discovery IQ PET/CT imaging technology, and the furnishing of 700 imaging/scanning units to 200 hospitals, some of which had never before owned such innovation. Technologies supplied to the hospitals include the Discovery IQ PET/CT system, designed to provide both high image quality and quantitative standardized uptake value measurements; cSound, an imaging platform for better cardiovascular ultrasound quality; the SIGNA Explorer MR, created to improve image quality and workflow, and simplify operations; and the Carestation 620, a compact anesthesia system made specifically for small spaces.

Emerging markets like Egypt, however, were not the sole source of GE Healthcare’s growth last year. The company also paid mind to developed economies, launching macrocyclic agent Clariscan in Europe in early March. The latest addition to GE’s range of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast media options, Clariscan aims to better visualize brain, spine, and associated tissue abnormalities. The product is available in both vial and pre-filled syringe form, and complements the company’s existing linear agent Omniscan, which has been used in routine diagnostic practice for more than 25 years. Gadolinium-based agents have been shown to improve the contrast between normal and pathological tissue, and have therefore become a gold standard detection tool for MRI applications.

Innovation was integral to GE Healthcare’s 2017 sales surge, too. The company launched 26 new products in its imaging and clinical care solutions portfolios, including an automated, dry conduction thawing technology for cry-bags; a high-performance cardiovascular computed tomography (CT) system; and a more comfortable mammography system. The latter product (Senographe Pristina, designed exclusively by women) gives patients the ability to adjust the degree of breast compression during scans—an empowering feature intended to improve screening compliance and breast cancer detection.

“It’s the first in the industry, so nothing like this exists,” Agnes Berzsenyi, president and CEO of women’s healthcare for GE Healthcare, said when the Pristina made its debut in September.

Executives made the same claim about the CardioGraphe, a system developed in partnership with Israeli firm Arineta Ltd. to improve costs and non-invasive imaging accessibility in hospitals, emergency rooms, or point-of-care settings. The product creates a 3D image of the coronaries, valves, chambers, and myocardium in one heartbeat and can also perform CT angiography studies beyond the heart, including both the aorta and carotids.

Another “first” is very likely through GE’s partnership with the University of California, San Francisco, where clinicians are working on a library of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for faster imaging scan assessment. The team’s initial focus is formulas that can distinguish between a normal scan and those requiring follow-up or acute intervention; one currently under development, for example, screens X-rays for the presence of pneumothorax (collapsed lung), and alerts radiologists to prioritize the screening in the worklist queue.

“What is so powerful about combining analytics, deep learning, and cloud technology is that the solutions will only get smarter and more scalable over time,” Charles Koontz, chief digital officer of GE Healthcare, said last fall. “While this partnership begins in Silicon Valley, it’s the global users of the algorithms who will disrupt the way care is delivered.”

Other healthcare disruptions are on the way through a handful of partnerships and acquisitions GE finalized in 2017, including:

• • A deal for United Kingdom-based Monica Healthcare, maker of wearable, wireless fetal monitors used with 100,000 patients last year. The company’s single-use Novii device measures maternal and fetal heart rates as well as uterine activity.

• • The purchase of British cryogenic processing firm Asymptote, whose technology preserves cell viability during the cryogenic processing of cellular therapies.

• • The deal for 22-year-old healthcare consultant Novia Strategies, now part of GE Healthcare Camden Group. The operating unit provides advisory services to more than 2,400 hospitals and health systems on such issues as care delivery redesign, accelerating health system integration, population health management, and resource maximization.

• • A 10-year collaboration with Partners HealthCare to integrate AI into the hospital setting. The union involves Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Clinical Data Science, and will feature co-located multidisciplinary teams with broad data access, computational infrastructure, and clinical expertise. Initially, the pair will develop applications for improved clinician productivity and patient outcomes in diagnostic imaging, but the eventual goal is to create new business models for healthcare AI as well as products for medical specialties like molecular pathology, genomics, and population health.

• • An agreement with Redwood City, Calif.-based HeartFlow Inc. to increase the clinical availability and adoption of FFRct, a proprietary technology to diagnose and treat coronary artery disease (CAD). HeartFlow’s fractional flow reserve computed tomography helps clinicians create a definitive, personalized treatment plan for CAD patients, thereby reducing the need for additional invasive testing. The technology is touted as the first (and only) non-invasive technique to provide insight into both the extent and impact of CAD on blood flow to the heart. The companies are targeting the U.S. market initially before expanding it in the future.

$18.3 Billion ($123.6B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 54,000 (295,000 total)

Oct. 13, 2008.

The date stands like an ugly scar in the far corners of Diana Franklin’s mind, a constant reminder of her bitter battle for survival.

Oct. 13, 2008.

On that day, at precisely 4:45 p.m., Franklin was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), an uncommon but particularly aggressive and lethal strain of the disease that tends to favor African-American women.

Oct. 13, 2008.

A difficult day, certainly, but a oddly liberating one as well.

Oct. 13, 2008.

On that day, the waiting finally ended.

“I think one of the worst parts about having cancer is the waiting game. I mean, you take all these tests and you wait, and in the meantime you’re praying the tests will be positive—for you, not for the cancer,” Franklin said in a short video posted to GE Healthcare’s website. “That’s actually the worst part—the waiting. The anxiety you have is just horrible. It’s a mind game that you play, and you can’t even enjoy life. It consumes you…”

The anxiety most definitely consumed Franklin’s existence. Most days, her breast health was all she could think about.

Thus, the diagnosis was somewhat of a relief to Franklin. She could now move forward with a treatment plan and work to restore her health.

It wouldn’t be easy, though. IBC grows and spreads quicker than more common types of breast cancer; upon diagnosis, the disease typically has already invaded other parts of the body, making it frustratingly difficult to conquer. Only 40 percent of IBC patients survive after the first five years and reoccurrence is high after the fifth year, according to statistics.

Franklin, however, was determined to beat the odds. She enlisted the help of Kristi Funk, M.D., a board-certified breast surgeon who performed a double mastectomy on actress Angelina Jolie in 2013 and treated Grammy Award-winning singer Sheryl Crow in 2006. Funk was director of patient education at Cedars-Sinai Breast Center in Los Angeles, Calif., before founding the Pink Lotus Breast Center in nearby Beverly Hills in 2007. She opened the facility in 2009, shortly before the birth of her triplet boys.

As a healthcare professional, Funk has seen more than her fair share of contestants play the cancer waiting game. During the first few years of her center’s existence, in fact, Funk was a reluctant participant in the process, inevitably scheduling biopsies weeks after inconclusive or questionable mammograms for patients with dense breasts. She yearned for a way to close the gap.

“With someone who has an abnormal mammogram, we immediately conduct an ultrasound. But if they need more [testing], even in our hands, they might have to wait a month or more to get a biopsy and results,” Funk said in the same GE Healthcare video. “In the meantime, their minds are spinning out of control. They’re literally wondering who’s going to take care of their children or their job, because that’s where a woman’s mind goes. So they’ve already leapt to the worst-case scenario.”

And Funk’s patients continued taking that leap until the center installed a SenoBright contrast enhanced spectral mammography unit from GE Healthcare in March 2012. Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just five months before that, the machine produces digital contrast-enhanced breast images by means of an X-ray contrast agent and a dual energy acquisition technique. SenoBright uses X-rays at multiple energies to create two separate but almost simultaneous exposures that illuminate and highlight areas of iodinated contrast.

SenoBright is the answer to countless breast cancer patients’ prayers. Not only does the machine streamline the testing process, it also significantly reduces the delay between initial testing and final diagnosis. Further, it helps reduce false positive tests, and prevent unnecessary biopsies and surgeries.

“We have an arsenal of diagnostic and imaging tools at our disposal but SenoBright has filled the single biggest void, and that is how to handle an inconclusive mammogram and ultrasound expeditiously and in-house,” Funk said. “Using the same team that already knows how to implement and read mammograms, we have amazing answers within minutes. The same day we stress out a patient, we can say to her, ‘You know what? Let’s add this contrast, repeat the mammogram, and I can let you go home 10 minutes from now with answers and a plan.”

No more waiting.

“It’s really hard to put into words how technology has helped so many breast cancer survivors,” said Franklin, who now serves as operations manager at the Pink Lotus Breast Center. “To have something like SenoBright…I don’t think I can even say it without crying…When you see the look on patients’ faces when they know or don’t know and it’s almost immediate…it’s an absolute incredible device that [GE Healthcare] designed.”

Most incredible, perhaps, for its lifesaving potential. Research indicates contrast enhanced spectral mammography (CESM) improves lesion localization and is a better diagnostic tool than magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) alone. Several clinical studies, in fact, have found CESM sensitivity and testing accuracy to be consistently higher than MRI, with sensitivity averaging 100 percent and precision fluctuating between 79 percent and 80 percent (compared with 93 percent and 73 percent, respectively, for MRI exams).

Such data bodes well for the technology’s future: GE expects more than 1 million women to undergo CESM examinations with SenoBright machines through 2020, potentially impacting mammography results for nearly 250,000 patients.

ANALYST INSIGHTS: Similar to J&J, GE is another large company in a strategic flux regarding its Healthcare business. Kieran Murphy, newly appointed CEO of GE Healthcare, will be a good leader for this business unit. The real question: With the poor stock performance of GE as a whole (which has created a change in leadership at the top), does GE begin to “spin off” its business units, including Healthcare?

—Dave Sheppard, Co-Founder and Principal, MedWorld Advisors

Paramount to GE’s lofty ambitions is its ability to adapt the wizardry and waste-no-time habits of Silicon Valley to its own evolving world of industrial manufacturing. The company has taken major steps in recent years to transform itself into a “Digital Industrial” leader by shedding its bloated finance arm, GE Capital, and more traditional businesses like water and appliances, in favor of the sensors and software that constitute the lifeblood of the industrial internet, also known as the Internet of Things.

The company ramped up its efforts considerably in 2016, investing $4 billion to enhance its analytics software and machine learning capability, and another $2 billion to improve market share in the rapidly growing additive manufacturing industry. In addition, GE launched the Industrial Internet Control System and Predix Box, devices that run algorithms and analyze data in real time to help facilitate digital connectivity, security, and computing.

GE’s long-term survival is going to depend as much on software, digital hardware, and computing systems as it does on such long-established industries as energy, transportation, and healthcare. Perhaps even more so: Championed by retiring Chairman and CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt, executives aim to transform the multinational into a “top 10 software company by 2020” in order to stake a claim in the planet’s $225 billion industrial internet market.

“[It’s] probably the most important thing I’ve worked on in my career,” Immelt told The New York Times last summer, noting the company has no contingency plans in place in case of failure. “It’s this or bust.”

Though it’s far too early to declare victory, GE is really not in any danger of going bust in its bid to dominate the digital industrial space. Though its 2016 stock prices stalled (ranging between $27.75 and $33), the company’s overall revenue rose 5.4 percent last year to $123.7 billion, and net earnings climbed out of a $6.12 billion hole from 2015 to reach $8.83 billion. Diluted net earnings rebounded as well, increasing nearly six-fold to $1.

“Your company delivered in a year of sluggish growth and geopolitical surprise. The challenge for any company is to invest in the future while delivering results,” Immelt told shareholders in a lengthy letter at the start of GE’s 2016 annual report. “We have challenged ourselves to hit aggressive financial goals as we transform GE. In 2016, we made progress on our goals…”

Indeed it did. Cash flow from operating activities surged 83 percent to $30 billion, and backlog swelled to a record $321 billion. In addition, GE returned $30.5 billion to investors through dividends and share buybacks.

The recovery was evident throughout the company, with five of GE’s seven business segments recording gains (three were double-digit hikes). Renewable Energy took the biggest leap, bounding 44 percent to $9 billion. Power was next, jumping 24.8 percent to $26.8 billion, followed by Oil & Gas, which experienced a 13.8 percent decrease in 2015 revenue and a 12 percent dropoff in profit. In 2016, that segment partially reversed its for- tunes with a 21.6 percent sales hike (to $12.9 billion), though profit tumbled 42.6 percent to $1.39 billion.

Along with growth in Aviation and Healthcare, GE’s profitable segments more than neutralized losses in Transportation and Energy Connections & Lighting, down 20.5 percent and 7.4 percent respectively. Aviation rose 6.5 percent to $26.2 billion, while Healthcare edged up 3.7 percent to $18.3 billion.

Like Oil & Gas, the Healthcare segment changed course in 2016 (year ended Dec. 31), improving its profit 9.8 percent to $3.2 billion, and increasing its profit margin a whole percentage point (17.3 percent). It also made small gains in services and equipment revenue, and boosted its total orders value by $600 million to $19.2 billion.

Executives attributed the turnaround in Healthcare mainly to technological innovation as well as demand for productivity-based tech services and IT/cloud-based solutions—further proof of software’s expanding role in the medical arena.

“If you think of [the] iPhone, its utility is fundamentally more than just the phone and camera,” newly crowned CEO John Flannery recently told the website Business Insider. “It’s all the other things that you’re able to do because of the combination of the hardware and software. And I think you’ll see the same thing in our business.”

It’s already started, actually. Building on the GE Health Cloud—an ecosystem connecting software, hardware, and medical devices—the company last year announced a next-generation IT vision for ambulatory care. Dubbed Project Northstar, the initiative combines population health, care delivery, patient engagement, and financial management in an integrated, interoperable software program. Project Northstar aims to deliver a connected workflow solution to help ambulatory providers navigate the changing landscape of value-based care while enhancing care quality and managing mixed payment models.

The company further enhanced its software and analytics prowess in 2016 through partnerships with Boston Children’s Hospital and UC San Francisco’s Center for Digital Health

Innovation.

The latter collaboration attempts to create a library of deep learning algorithms that will help clinicians make faster and more effective decisions about the diagnosis and treatment of patients with both common and complex medical conditions. The pair will integrate data from various imaging technologies (computed tomography, magnetic resonance, X-ray) as well as clinical data sets and electronic health records to develop the algorithms.

In Boston, GE is pairing its Health Cloud with the clinical knowledge of hospital radiologists to develop a decision support platform that can distinguish variability in pediatric brain MRI scans. The system will be pre-loaded with normative reference scans from children of different ages for doctors worldwide to use as a benchmark when reading pediatric brain scans.

The company is also using its Health Cloud to improve connectivity between clinicians and patients. Working with cloud-based medical imaging solutions provider Trice Imaging Inc., GE developed a program called Tricefy, which adds image sharing, diagnostic collaboration, remote review, archiving, and electronic health record integration to its Ultrasound Women’s Health product portfolio. Already available in certain countries and regions, the system enables clinicians to remotely access images and reports, and confer electronically to determine treatment.

“The GE Health Cloud will allow our partners to use machine learning to improve diagnostics and therapy,” Immelt said in the 2016 annual report. “Our competitive advantage is that GE devices produce 45 million images daily, so we are in a prime position to leverage data to improve patient outcomes.”

The company is also jockeying for a prime position in the burgeoning cell therapy sector, a market slated to be worth $10 billion by 2020 and $30 billion by 2030, assuming an average treatment cost of roughly $250,000 a patient, according to internal GE research.

Certainly, the still-evolving cell therapy field is quite a departure for GE, a company that built its empire around more traditional, well-known industries like lighting, power generation, and appliances. But executives are confident of the technology’s potential to transform healthcare.

“People are still learning, obviously,” Flannery told Reuters last summer. “But this doesn’t change our view that cell therapy is going to be fundamentally transformative in healthcare. We want to double down on life sciences, and especially so in the cell therapy business.”

GE more than doubled down in cell therapy last year, acquiring integrated cell bioprocessing systems provider Biosafe Group SA in July, and forging a licensing agreement with Vancouver-based STEMCELL Technologies Inc. in August. It also co-invested $31.5 million with the Canadian government to create a new Centre for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies in Toronto (BridGE@CCRM), and through its venture capital subsidiary, launched a startup with the Mayo Clinic called Vitruvian Networks Inc., a platform company focused on accelerating access to cell and gene therapies through advanced, cloud-ready software systems and manufacturing services.

With its cell therapy investments, GE is not intending to market medicine. Rather, the company aims to offer an “end-to-end” service to pharmaceutical companies through various tools, from cell bioreactors to treatment delivery software systems.

In purchasing Biosafe, for example, GE Healthcare obtained equipment used to manufacture various cell therapies. “This more than doubles our capacity right now in cell therapy, and we think we can easily have a $1 billion-plus business in cell therapy in the next 10 years,” Flannery said in announcing the acquisition.

The STEMCELL alliance, on the other hand, allows the company to commercialize cGMP-grade versions of its partner’s T-cell reagents for isolating, activating, and culturing T-cells in clinical applications. These reagents are critical tools in developing and manufacturing cell and gene therapies for patients.

$17.6 Billion ($117.4B total)
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 52,000 (333,000)

There is no mistaking the kismet.

Nineteenth-century tinkerer Charles F. Brush is perhaps best known for illuminating Cleveland Public Square in 1879 with his arc lights and “dynamo” (electric generator). But his most groundbreaking invention took shape eight years later in his own backyard—a 60-foot wind turbine that powered his 17-room graystone mansion continuously for two decades.

Easily his most conspicuous creation, the 40-ton windmill sat on a gudgeon that extended 8 feet into masonry. Its wheel measured 56 feet in diameter, had 144 cedar wood blades, and a sail surface of 1,800 square feet. A 20-foot shaft inside the structure’s tower turned pulleys and belts which, at its top speed, spun a dynamo 500 revolutions per minute. The dynamo itself connected to 408 batteries in Brush’s basement that illuminated 350 incandescent lamps ranging from 10-50 candlepower, and operated three electric motors and two arc lights. The entire contraption produced 12 kilowatts of electricity at its peak.

Though it was hailed as a technical marvel, Brush’s windmill was not very practical. “The reader must not suppose that electric lighting by means of power supplied in this way is cheap because the wind costs nothing,” a Dec. 20, 1890, article in the Scientific American stated. “On the contrary, the cost of the plant is so great as to more than offset the cheapness of the motive power. However, there is a great satisfaction in making use of one of nature’s most unruly motive agents.”

Thankfully, Brush didn’t need to profit from his green energy project. By the time he erected his windmill, the former child prodigy had already built his fortune through the arc light, dynamo, and more than 50 other patented inventions. He also ran a successful company (Brush Electric) for nearly a decade before selling it to Thomson-Houston in 1889, which then merged with several other firms to form General Electric in 1892.

Now, nearly 130 years after first harnessing natural energy, Brush’s descendant firm is improving on his original turbine design with a digital wind farm project designed to improve efficiency and lower costs (cue the kismet).

GE’s Digital Wind Farm is based on its new generation of Brilliant wind turbines, a 2 MW platform that uses a cloud-based computer modeling system to determine maximum power generation at peak efficiency for specific locations. Each turbine is connected to an advanced software network that allows for real-time contact and monitoring, permitting operators to make adjustments to boost efficiency. GE claims these digital farms could potentially increase energy production by up to 20 percent, and generate as much as $50 billion for the wind industry (based on all global wind farms using the company’s latest turbines and technology).

“Every wind farm has a unique profile, like DNA or a fingerprint,” Keith Longtin, general manager for wind projects at GE Renewable Energy, told the Harvard Business Review. “We thought if we could capture data from the machines about how they interact with the landscape and the wind, we could build a digital twin for each wind farm inside a computer, use it to design the most efficient turbine for each pad on the farm, and then keep optimizing the whole thing.”

GE’s cyber wind farms are part of a radical overhaul designed to transform the 124-year-old global conglomerate into a digital industrial leader of the IIoT (industrial internet of things). At the core of GE’s metamorphosis is a drive to use advances in sensors, communications, and data analytics to improve performance for both itself and customers. Pan-European medical service provider Affidea, for example, uses GE Healthcare’s DoseWatch software to analyze 65,000 computed tomography (CT) scans every month. Digital analysis enables clinicians to monitor radiation exposure and contrast media injection dose during CT procedures, effectually helping hospitals optimize and personalize dosage requirements for each individual, avoiding over-exposure. Similarly, Finnish engineers are developing wireless tools designed to stream heartbeat, blood pressure, respiration, and other physiological data into the cloud for future download and analysis by doctors and hospitals.

“Our aspiration is to offer with every GE product a pathway to greater productivity through sensors, software, and big-data analytics,” GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt told investors in the company’s 2015 annual report. “We have been investing in software and accumulating data for decades…the technology required to compete [as a digital industrial] is in our sweet spot. So, why not us?”

GE’s success, however, may hinge more on strategy than motivation. In setting itself up as a software firm that can help businesses reap the benefits of the IIoT, GE will go head-to-head with more established players like Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, SAP, and Oracle. To boost its chances of survival among such reputable bellwethers, the company sold off GE Capital assets last year worth more than $100 billion, acquired energy businesses from French railway systems developer Alstom, created a Digital Division (integrating its Software Center, global IT/ commercial software teams, and cyber security arm, Wurldtech), and debuted its Predix cloud-based software platform for the industrial internet. Predix enables asset and operations optimization by providing a standard way to run industrial-scale analytics and connect machines,

data, and people. Deployed on machines, on-premise, or in the cloud, Predix combines a stack of technologies for distributed computing and big data analytics, asset data management, machine-to-machine communication, and mobility.

“We’re the only company that will have the machines, analytics and operating systems,” Immelt said in December 2015. “That’s how we’ll play the Industrial Internet.”

GE’s IIoT game plan involves building $1 billion-plus digital franchises in each of its eight industrial businesses. Such an undertaking is already well underway in the company’s Transportation segment, which recently rolled out its newest locomotive, the Tier 4. Considered a “brilliant rolling data center” by industry bigwigs, the Tier 4 is equipped with more than 200 sensors that collect gigabytes of information about engine performance, exhaust, fuel mix, and rail conditions. The locomotive uses software to analyze collected data and determine ways to run smarter and more efficiently.

Healthcare’s digital future will almost certainly rely on the Predix-powered GE Health Cloud unveiled late last year at the Radiological Society of North America 2015 annual meeting. Intended, essentially, as an ecosystem connecting software, hardware, and medical devices, the Cloud is GE’s modern-day solution to the more conventional methods used to store, share, and analyze imaging data from hospital equipment.

The Cloud, though, is not designed to be an extension of GE imaging devices; rather, it aims to expand hospital radiology departments’ computing capabilities, accepting DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) files from any instrument, regardless of manufacturer. Featuring an open software development kit for third-party programs, the GE Health Cloud will more or less resemble a large, agnostic cloud computing platform such as Amazon Web Services or the Google Cloud Platform, but with a menu of built-in apps for medical imaging.

“We are fundamentally transforming life both for the radiologist and for the chief information officer,” Justin Steinman, chief marketing officer for GE Healthcare IT, said at the Cloud’s launch. “Since it’s built on a single platform, the cloud will enable CIOs of healthcare systems to quickly scale up or scale down their IT systems and roll out the latest tools. It will also make it easier for radiologists to collaborate with their peers within their hospital and with outside experts.”

The Health Cloud’s Predix software—an industrial-grade version of smartphone platforms—allows developers to quickly create apps when they spot a new market opportunity. One app available at the Cloud’s launch was Centricity MDT Virtual Meetings, which allows clinicians to share screens and conduct live imaging analyses with entire care teams using their own devices. Another, Centricity Case Exchange, shares images with doctors outside of the user’s hospital, including physicians who don’t use the GE Health Cloud themselves.

“With Centricity Case Exchange, I can publish an image in the cloud, send an email to a clinician in New York City, and ask him to do a remote consult,” Steinman explained.

GE is developing its own apps, too; it is currently fine-tuning a program to work with longitudinal records of patient data, called Centricity Image Access Portal. The DICOM standard has already laid the groundwork for tying together a single patient’s imaging history, but in the high-performance computing environment of the cloud, that record can more easily be tapped for unexpected insights. The data-rich field of medical imaging is especially fertile ground for machine learning, finding patterns impenetrable to radiologists looking at a handful of scans at a time.

“The industry is moving from healthcare that’s driven by volume to a system built on value,” noted Jan De Witte, president and CEO of GE Healthcare IT. “The Health Cloud will help us get there.”

It might also help GE Healthcare rediscover prosperity. The segment was one of four that lost value in 2015 (year ended Dec. 31), falling victim to inflation, a stronger U.S. dollar, and lower prices of diagnostic imaging and clinical systems. Healthcare revenue fell 3.82 percent to $17.6 billion and profit stagnated, slipping $100 million to $2.9 billion, according to GE’s 2015 annual report. Total order value slid 3.6 percent to $18.6 billion and backlog rose 4.2 percent to $17.2 billion, with most of the reserve devoted to services ($11.6 billion).

U.S. sales comprised nearly half of Healthcare’s 2015 revenue (48 percent). The segment garnered approximately 22 percent of its revenue from Asia, nearly 20 percent from Europe, 8 percent from the Americas, and 4 percent from the Middle East/Africa.

Healthcare’s losses, however, paled in comparison to GE’s Oil & Gas segment, which experienced a 13.8 percent decrease in 2015 revenue ($16.4 billion) and a 12 percent dropoff in profit ($2.4 billion). Other segments with shrinking sales included Renewable Energy, where proceeds tumbled 1.9 percent to $6.2 billion, and Energy Management, which posted a 3.8 percent decline in revenue to $7.6 billion.

The waning profits in Healthcare, Oil & Gas, and other business segments were partially offset by gains in GE’s other four units, stabilizing the company’s overall net sales last year. Power revenue rose 4.4 percent to $21.5 billion, while Transportation proceeds jumped 5 percent to $5.9 billion, Appliances & Lighting climbed 4.1 percent to $8.7 billion, and Aviation sales increased 2.8 percent to $24.6 billion. Total company sales rose a tepid $202 million to $117.38 billion but industrial earnings per share soared 19 percent. Moreover, segment margins expanded by 80 basis points.

“We delivered good results. GE’s total stock return was 28 percent above the performance of the S&P 500, which grew by 1 percent, and the industrial index, which declined by 4 percent. GE ended the year as the eighth most valuable company in the world,” Immelt said in his letter to shareholders. “We are just beginning our transformation as the Digital Industrial company. Our success as a Digital Industrial depends on partnering with our customers. Our strategic opportunities are vast. Our products, and more importantly, our customer relationships, last for decades. At GE, we are builders.”

Quite prolific builders, actually. The company’s Healthcare segment assembled more than a half-dozen partnerships last year, framing its future around medical image sharing, radiology services, cardiovascular medicine, big data research, clinical trials, and the hybrid operating room.

In the year’s most high-profile collaboration, GE and the National Basketball Association (NBA) formed a research alliance aimed at preventing, diagnosing, and treating common sports injuries. The partnership is spearheaded by a 20-person strategic advisory board comprising team physicians and clinical researchers from various fields, including orthopedics, sports medicine, radiology, and epidemiology. It is chaired by Dr. John DiFiori, the NBA’s director of sports medicine and a former president of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine.

“It’s a partnership that makes a lot of sense from a research standpoint,” DiFiori told ESPN.com. “Our particular interest in research is that we’re focused on musculoskeletal issues, such as hamstring pulls, torn ligaments, herniated disks. The overuse injuries—soft-tissue injuries in particular—are probably not getting the attention that they need to. They can evolve into significant impact on the players’ careers. We want to make sure that is a big part of our advisory board and promote that as an area of active research.”

GE Healthcare’s other partnerships included:

• • A collaboration with German hospital/operating room equipment provider Maquet to develop a new flexible angiography system for hybrid ORs. The system will combine GE’s Discovery IGS 730 with Maquet’s Magnus operating table system. The fusion of both products will open up operating rooms to multidisciplinary surgical interventions. Since the Magnus system has a universal tabletop, the hybrid OR can also be used for standard procedures.

• • An agreement with OneMedNet Corporation to promote data and peer-to-peer image sharing in the United States. Enabled by OneMedNet’s BEAM Network, providers can quickly and securely transfer images using a patented peer-to-peer web-based service.

• • A seven-year pact with Temple University Health System to provide high-quality, efficient imaging services at a lower cost. The pair is aiming to save $39 million by targeting changes in Temple’s “operational, clinical, and financial outcomes.” GE is upgrading the radiology departments at Temple University Hospital’s main, episcopal, and northeastern campuses, Jeanes Hospital, and the Fox Chase Cancer Center, installing its most up-to-date technologies and providing consultation services.

• • A global supply agreement for Sartorius Stedim Biotech’s membrane adsorber purification technology, Sartobind. The deal calls for Sartorius Stedim to manufacture its adsorber technologies for GE Healthcare’s life sciences division, which will market the product as part of its ReadyToProcess portfolio.

• • A memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to develop collaborative research programs in cardiovascular medicine, imaging, and big data research. GE Healthcare engineers will team with OHSU physician-scientists to investigate the use of ultrasound for value-based healthcare in rural and underserved communities; and adapt and test magnetic resonance pulse sequences to enhance neurovascular studies. Under the MOU, GE Healthcare will provide mentorship and support to OHSU through the MedTech Alliance, Biomedical Innovation Program, and the OHSU Startup Conference.

• • A collaboration with Emerson Process Management, a global business of Emerson, to increase productivity and improve efficiency in biopharmaceutical production. The two companies are working together to integrate Emerson’s DeltaV distributed control system with GE Healthcare’s enterprise offerings and start-to-finish technologies for the global biomanufacturing industry. The first DeltaV-driven GE Healthcare installation, FlexFactory, is an integrated manufacturing platform based on single-use technologies.

• • A union with NeoGenomics, a biotech company specializing in genomic cancer diagnostics. The Fort Myers, Fla.-based firm purchased GE Healthcare’s Clarient unit last fall for $275 million to diversity its portfolio, and is teaming with the larger merchant on bioinformatics to explore the potential for new products that combine genomic and imaging data.

$18.3 Billion ($148.6B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 51,000 (117,000)

“Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked.”

— Elizabeth Berg, writer

In the fall of 2005, Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Calif. As he walked onstage for a question-and-answer session with event host John Battelle, the zealous crowd fell suddenly silent, waiting to hear Brin’s secret formula for entrepreneurial success.

Sensing the anxiety, Battelle cut straight to the chase with his first question. “What do you attribute Google’s incredible success to?” he asked.

The audience held its collective breath.

Brin responded quickly, answering with the kind of candor and self-assurance he’d likely give a routine engineering query: “The number one factor that contributed to our success was luck.”

Not hard work. Not perseverance. Not vision. Just plain luck.

Really? Is success truly serendipitous?

It is to some extent, argue Thor Muller and Lane Becker, co-founders of Get Satisfaction, an online community platform that enables companies to participate in ongoing Web-based conversations with customers. Brin’s answer, they claim, was not a dismissal of his impressive achievements, but rather a testament to the daunting alignment of factors required for Google-like commercial success.

In their 2012 book, “Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business,” Muller and Becker attribute Brin’s success to his ability to both recognize and capitalize on serendipity. The authors note that Brin combined a passion for his work, a commitment to his company’s purpose, and a determination to utilize those qualities in the best way possible.

The mix of motivation, instinct, accidental discoveries and passion shared by many wildly successful companies like Google are part of a business strategy Muller and Becker call “planned serendipity.”

“Accidents happen,” the pair note. “There’s nothing mystical about them—but it’s our practical ability to take advantage of the best accidents that transforms them from forgettable moments into incredible opportunities. This is the essence of planned serendipity, the kind of luck you make for yourself.”

General Electric’s management is well-versed in such luck. Eight years ago, the company’s chief financial officer (CFO) was attending a meeting in midtown Manhattan when he (fatefully?) ran into businessman/author/venture capitalist Peter S. Cohan, owner of a VC-management consulting firm. Recognizing the fortuitousness of the encounter, the CFO pulled Cohan aside to solicit his advice on improving GE stock.

Cohan suggested the company sell its stakes in NBC Universal, GE Capital (except for the parts involved in industrial equipment sales), and its Appliances unit. He also advised the CFO to invest more in businesses that compete in the jet engine, energy, and transportation industries. “For all I know, I could have been the fiftieth person to tell him the same thing,” Cohan wrote in his Forbes column earlier this year.

Or, maybe the CFO—now chairman/CEO of GE Capital—was just creating his own luck. Regardless, company executives followed Cohan’s advice to the letter, selling NBC Universal to Comcast for $23.2 billion in two separate transactions, unloading its Appliances unit last fall for $3.3 billion, and shedding most of its banking assets, beginning with 2014 spinoff of GE Capital’s private label credit card company Synchrony Financial in a $2.9 billion initial public offering. The company also is selling off the bulk of its commercial lending business, its leasing segment and all consumer banking platforms in an attempt to return to its roots as an industrial manufacturing powerhouse.

The downsizing, branded an “important financial pivot” by top executives, will erase one of the main legacies of past chief executive John F. Welch Jr., who gave GE ballast in the 1980s and 1990s by entering formerly non-competitive markets like finance and broadcasting. Perhaps more importantly, however, it will enable the company to align its portfolio and long-term growth strategy with the changing business environment.

The wide range of asset sales will help finance a huge return of money to shareholders, which eventually will reach $90 billion by 2018. More than half of that amount, or roughly $50 billion, will come from a stock repurchase, one of the biggest on record.

“It is important that you see 2014-2016 as a [financial] pivot,” Chairman/CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt told shareholders in a lengthy letter at the start of GE’s 2014 annual report. We expect to grow EPS each year. Industrial earnings should expand by more than 10 percent while Capital shrinks dramatically. We expect industrial earnings to be 75 percent of the total by 2016 and to return $50 billion to you in dividends and buyback. We are making GE a better company and are confident this will be reflected in the share price. Today, GE is a different company—a company in motion, a company that is well-positioned to seize this moment and lead…I am more confident than ever that our best days lie ahead.”

Certainly a tall order, considering the splendor of days past. In 2014 (year ended Dec. 31), revenue rose 6 percent and profit jumped 10 percent in the company’s seven industrial segments. Total backlog reached a record $261 billion, up $17 billion from 2013, bolstered by a 7 percent increase in Aviation backlog (to $134 billion) and a whopping 43 percent spike in Transportation backlog (to $21 billion). Moreover, total orders were up 7 percent last year due to a 10 percent hike in service orders, margins expanded to 16.2 percent, and shareholders received more than $11 billion through dividends and buybacks.

Nevertheless, the company did face its fair share of challenges in 2014: Only three of its industrial segments generated significant profits, shareholder return fell 7 percent, trailing the S&P 500, and GE Capital proceeds continued to shrink, slipping 3 percent to $42.7 billion, the firm’s latest annual report shows. The sales leaders included Power & Water, which grew revenue 11.5 percent to $27.5 billion; Oil & Gas, which expanded proceeds 10 percent to $18.6 billion; and Aviation, which increased sales 9.5 percent to $23.9 billion.

The Energy Management and Transportation segments failed to bear fruit last year, falling 3.3 percent ($7.3 billion) and 4 percent ($5.6 billion) respectively.

Sales flatlined in Appliances & Lighting, up 0.79 percent to $8.4 billion, and Healthcare, which recouped the $90 million it lost in 2013, growing sales 0.5 percent to $18.29 billion. And though healthcare equipment orders grew 17 percent, the segment nonetheless relinquished its No. 3 earnings spot to Oil & Gas.

Healthcare profits also flatlined in 2014, sliding $1 million to $3.05 billion as lower prices, inflation and a strong U.S. dollar prevailed over higher productivity, higher volume, and SG&A (selling, general and administrative) cost reductions.

“Organically, Healthcare’s performance was better than the headlines [suggest] when you think about the impacts of foreign currency exchange [rates],” GE Senior Vice President/Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bornstein told analysts during a 2014 earnings conference call in January. “The developed markets feel like they are getting stronger for Healthcare. We’re going to have challenges in Russia and some of the emerging markets. Percentage-wise, the United States is still the biggest single market we have in Healthcare. And we feel much better about the strength there than we have in the past.”

A plethora of new technologies unveiled last year likely contributed to that confidence. Those making their debuts included the Discovery NM/CT 670 Pro hybrid scanner, the Voluson E10 ultrasound machine, the SIGNA Pioneer 3.0 Tesla MRI system, and SPINlab.

Not truly a medical device in itself, the SPINlab is designed for use in research studies for rapid visualization of metabolism at the cellular level. The hyperpolarizing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system was developed by Research Circle Technology, an entity spun off in 2011 to advance imaging science.

Previously, a system of SPINlab’s capabilities required a clean room, lots of helium and a significant number of trained staff to operate. But the SPINlab system integrates a dedicated fluid path, quality control, and the ability to hyperpolarize several samples simultaneously. Scientists at Cancer Research U.K.’s Cambridge Research Institute are using the SPINlab system to improve cancer treatment efficacy and guide therapy.

The NM/CT 670 integrates GE’s Optima CT 540 scanner, which includes 50-slice equivalent CT speed; dose management tools such as OptiDose, DoseWatch, and adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction (ASIR); and a streamlined workflow for most standalone computed tomography (CT) procedures.

The product also features Q.Metrix, an application for measuring and reporting standardized uptake values in the affected organ or lesions. The software allows for quantitative SPECT SUVs with multidimensional organ and lesion characterization. In addition, the NM/CT 670 incorporates GE’s Q.AC image reconstruction algorithm, which aims to provide improved accuracy of SPECT attenuation correction to enable quantitative SPECT measurements even at very low doses.

The system also employs Dosimetry Toolkit, a clinical application that provides tools for organ segmentation, registration, and activity calculations for radioisotope therapy planning.

GE took sonogram imaging to another level with the September release of its Voluson E10 Ultrasound system, a machine that can reveal more about womb life than any medical device before it, according to the NY Daily News. “In the past, you could see a flat, two-dimensional image of the fetal profile,” Barbara Del Prince, a global managing director for ultrasound products, explained to GE Reports. “But today you can watch their movements in 3-D, see a smile or a grimace, glimpse their personality.”

The Voluson E10 has four times the ultrasound pathway, 10 times the data transfer for more speed and higher resolution, and four times the processing power for more flexibility with advanced applications.

The Voluson E10 not only gives parents a preview of their child’s personality, it also can give doctors important information about the baby’s health. For example, the machine can give an accurate picture of veins and arteries, allowing obstetricians to monitor a child’s brain and heart development from as early as the first trimester. “It may help doctors to make confident diagnoses sooner,” Del Prince said. And while the Voluson E10 is available for use in all patients, Del Prince noted the device particularly is useful in monitoring high-risk patients. “With these patients, physicians are looking for images to answer specific questions and to provide confidence in the diagnosis. Features such as electronic 4-D imaging are a great benefit in these high-risk cases.”

Three months after releasing the Voluson E10, GE debuted its SIGNA Pioneer 3.0 Tesla MRI system at the Radiological Society of North America 2014 Conference in Chicago, Ill. The Pioneer 3.0 system was designed with a new imaging technique called MAGiC, which GE claims may reduce imaging times by up to two-thirds. In addition, the scanner features an enhanced version of GE’s SilentScan technology to mute procedural noise.

MAGiC is a magnetic resonance technique that allows for the acquisition of multiple image contrasts at the same time. In a single scan T1, T2, STIR, TI FLAIR, T2 FLAIR and proton density-weighted images can be acquired, according to product data. Also, image contrast can be changed afterwards, as the device allows users to retrospectively change acquisition parameters such as TR, TE and T1 and see the results.

MAGiC was developed in collaboration with SyntheticMR AB of Linköping, Sweden. It likely was modeled after the company’s SyMRI technology, which uses a mutlislice, multiecho, and multi delay acquisition; from a single scan, SyMRI quantifies absolute T1 relaxation, T2 relaxation and proton density values as well as the amplitude of the local radio frequency B1 field.

“The healthcare industry is 10 percent of global GDP and going through change,” Immelt said in the annual report. “It is an area where we’ve been repositioning our business to succeed in a market that is demanding more technology, more flexibility and more tailored solutions. We are confident that all the innovations we are developing—from portable diagnostic tools to analytical offerings and next-generation imaging—are going to be critical growth drivers for the future.”

More than a half-dozen product approvals helped secure GE’s future growth in healthcare, as U.S. and European regulators approved innovations like the Revolution CT, the Discovery IGS 740 mobile angiography system, the Invenia automated breast ultrasound system, the Vivid T8 cardiovascular ultrasound device, SenoClaire breast imaging (with 3-D tomosythesis) and Q.Clear technology.

The Discovery IGS 740 is designed specifically for hybrid operating rooms. The system rides on floor and can position itself in just about any state, moving to-and-fro the patient as necessary. A spinning laser atop the imaging unit keeps an eye on markers placed along the surgical suite’s ceiling, which provides accurate real-time position information to the device and permits it to return to precisely the same state it previously took. The system features a large 41 inch by 41 inch (104 centimeter by 104 centimeter) detector, bedside controls, and imaging capabilities such as 3-D visualization, live 3-D guidance and needle tracking.

The SenoClaire breast tomosynthesis system is an advanced mammography device that produces cross-sectional images in addition to traditional two-dimensional exposures. The system is an upgrade to the Senographe Essential mammograph, a package that includes both new hardware and software.

SenoClaire uses an iterative reconstruction algorithm to combine data gathered from nine images taken of the breast at different angles into a three-dimensional view. This purportedly provides greater specificity and helps identify lesion margins with greater accuracy. GE claims the system can provide imaging no worse than traditional two-view digital mammography, but at half the dose and with only one compression of the breast.

GE Healthcare also secured its future growth through M&A, purchasing workforce management software provider API Healthcare, operating room management technology developer CHCA Computer Systems, and certain Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. life-science businesses.

The $1.06 billion deal with Thermo Fisher—the third biopharmaceutical acquisition in as many years—includes the firm’s cell-culture business, which consists of media and serums used to manufacture medicines and vaccines. The businesses, which generated a combined estimated revenue of $250 million in 2013, were put up for sale by Thermo Fisher late that year to expedite the European approval of its $13.6 billion acquisition of Life Technologies Corp.

For GE, the Thermo Fisher deal will broaden its life-science offerings and accelerate the development of technologies for cell biology research, cell therapy and the manufacture of biological drugs. Though it is not a drug maker, GE develops technologies and machines that help produce pharmaceuticals.

“It is a business that we have been expanding over the last several years,” former GE Healthcare President/CEO John Dineen told The Wall Street Journal. Dineen was replaced in October by John Flannery, head of business development.

GE’s biomanufacturing business accounts for roughly $1 billion of its healthcare windfall. “It is by far the fastest-growing and a very profitable segment,” Dineen said.

Shortly after announcing its deal with Thermo Fisher Scientific, GE broadcast its intention to buy API Healthcare of Hartford, Wis. GE executives said the purchase fits with the company’s overall strategy to bolster hospital efficiency.

Two and a half months after the API purchase, GE bought Montreal, Canada-based CHCA, whose Opera application provides data in support of surgical procedure management and decision-making. GE claimed the technology could help hospitals reduce wait times, prevent cancellations and increase patient throughput.

In a press statement, Jan De Witte, president/CEO of GE Healthcare IT, said the CHCA acquisition “complements our current OR [operating room] and perioperative software portfolio and will allow us to deliver a more integrated offering that better connects the workflow throughout the OR, using a mix of software, real-time data and powerful analytics to help drive better outcomes for patients.”

CHCA has developed OR analytics for more than 23 years; GE Healthcare has collaborated with the company to distribute the technology in Europe since 2003.

$18.20 Billion ($146 B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 54,000

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”  — Frederick Douglas.

The road to progress is seldom smooth. More often than not, it’s littered with bumps, breaks and barriers that can discourage and test even the most seasoned of travelers. The typical journey is excruciatingly slow, with the destination looming far off in the distance, perpetually hanging on the horizon like a desert mirage in the midday sun.

While frustrating, achieving progress through such means is necessary for business success. Many Fortune 500 companies—Apple Inc., Exxon Mobile Corporation, General Electric, Walmart among others—consistently have changed, grown and profited by “failing forward,” or learning from their mistakes.

Apple, for one, received quite an extensive education from its misfires: without the Apple Lisa, the Performa, the QuickTake, the PowerCD, the Bandai Pippin, the Newton, and the Interactive Television Box, there likely wouldn’t be the iMac, iPod and iPhone.
Walmart, too, learned some valuable lessons from the short-lived (higher-priced) Metro7 clothing line, the failed expansion into Germany and South Korea, and the 2012 Mexican bribery scandal (a New York Times report accused the company’s Mexican subsidiary of accepting more than $24 million worth of bribes to help the firm beat its competition’s expansion plans in the country).

Mistakes, then some progress. GE is not immune to the gaffe-and-grow formula, having long ago sold its computer division (developer of the cutting-edge GE 200, GE 400, GE 600, Datanet 30, Datanet 355 and others) to focus on the more promising fields of aviation, power/water, oil/gas, energy management and healthcare.

“GE has stayed competitive for more than a century—not because we are perfect—but because we make progress,” Board Chairman/CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt told shareholders in an eight-page letter at the start of the company’s 2013 annual report.

“Progress is about getting better, being better, doing better…As investors, you can expect us to listen, learn, adapt and change. You should expect us to get better every day, to make progress.”

Progress as well as mistakes.

GE certainly made progress last year, growing its segment profit 7 percent to $24.5 billion, expanding its operating earnings per share 9 percent, and returning $18 billion to investors through dividends and share repurchases through Dec. 31. The company ended 2013 with a record $244 billion in backlog and increased its earnings 12 percent mostly through strong performances in real estate and international lending/leasing.

In addition, total shareholder return ballooned 38 percent, and GE’s dividend jumped 16 percent, according to the 2013 annual report. The firm also added $64 billion of market cap, bringing its total worth to $282 billion and turning it into the world’s sixth most valuable company.

Much of that progress, however, was shadowed by mistakes. The multinational’s total revenues ($146 billion), for instance, remained flat for the second consecutive year, and only five of its seven business segments generated profits (a dramatic change from 2012, when all seven segments posted gains for the first time since 2006). The profit-makers included Energy Management, which grew sales 2.1 percent to $7.5 billion; Appliances & Lighting, which expanded revenue 4.6 percent to $8.3 billion; Transportation, which increased sales 4.9 percent to $5.8 billion; Aviation, which boosted revenues 9.5 percent to $21.9 billion; and Oil & Gas, which generated an additional 11.3 percent in sales ($16.9 billion).

The Healthcare and Power & Water segments failed to bear fruit last year, slipping 0.5 percent and 12.6 percent respectively, but both managed to maintain their top-earning spots within the company (Power & Water at No. 1 and Healthcare at No. 3).
Healthcare profits basically flatlined last year, grossing $18.2 billion in total, or just $90 million less than its 2012 haul. In the company’s annual report, executives attributed the ebb to lower prices, the effects of a stronger U.S. dollar and lower other income.

Healthcare’s profits were considerably more sound, rising 4 percent to $3 billion on higher volume and increased productivity.
“The difficult part about progress is that great results take time. But the payback can be huge,” Immelt said in his shareholder letter.
“At our kickoff meeting this year, the leader of our Ultrasound business—Anders Wold—gave a presentation about the power of ultrasound to solve global and rural health issues. In the 1990s, we were No. 7 in ultrasound. Today we are No. 1. In the past, we broke even; today we grow profits 15 percent annually at high margins. Ultrasound is a fast-paced, global business … if we trapped ourselves in dogma and slogans—don’t try new things; big companies can’t be fast; stick to what you  know—we would have given up on ultrasound long ago. Instead, we are winning.”

Immelt expects his company to travel the same slow path to progress in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology and traumatic brain injury treatment. In March 2013, GE and the National Football League (NFL) announced a four-year, $60 million collaboration to speed and improve traumatic brain injury diagnosis and treatment. Dubbed the “Head Health Initiative,” the plan features two Challenge topics: The first focused on developing imaging technologies and algorithms that could better detect and analyze subtle changes in the brain. Specifically, the two organizations wanted to help doctors better understand the molecular and physiological changes that occur shortly after a traumatic event.

“Traumatic brain injury is one of the greatest unmet medical needs of our time,” noted Geoff Manley, M.D., professor and vice-chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of California-San Francisco and chief of Neurotrauma at San Francisco General Hospital. Manley also is one of the 10 professionals named to the Head Health Initiative’s research advisory board.

“Every 20 seconds someone in the United States sustains a brain injury,” he continued. “A better understanding of the molecular, physiological and behavioral/biomechanical changes that occur shortly after a traumatic event is needed to reliably diagnose the types of changes that are difficult to identify using current technologies.”

In January 2014, GE and the NFL awarded $300,000 to each of the 16 most innovative Challenge I ideas. The winners, chosen from more than 400 entries in 27 countries, included Banyan Biomarkers Inc. of Alachua, Fla., which is developing a point-of-care blood test to rapidly detect the presence of mild and moderate brain trauma; VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in Espoo, which is studying the reaction of small molecules such as cholesterol, glucose and amino acids in the body after mild traumatic brain injury; the University of Pittsburgh (Pa.), where researchers—in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—are using high-definition fiber-tracking to link impairments from concussions with changes in the brain; and Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where analysts at the Center for Neuroimaging and St. Vincent Sports Performance are using MRI to investigate the ways brain flow is altered after concussions in high school athletes.

GE and the NFL are providing mentorship, access to GE researchers and industry thought leaders to develop the 16 ideas into viable diagnostic tools. Six of the awardees also could win an additional $500,000 award in 2015.

The Initiative’s Challenge II focus is on new materials and technologies that can protect the brain from traumatic injury and new tools for tracking head impacts in real time. Up to 10 ideas will be rewarded with as much as $500,000 in funding this fall.

“In December, I sat with four of the most pre-eminent brain scientists in the U.S. We discussed the advanced technology around treating diseases of the brain, from Alzheimer’s to traumatic brain injury,” Immelt said. “[Brain disease] is one of the most interesting, promising and challenging horizons in healthcare.”

So is medical imaging, and GE significantly broadened its horizons last year with several key product launches, including: the MAVRIC SL, a magnetic resonance (MR) device that can more accurately capture soft tissue and bone images in patients with MR conditional-labeled implants such as joint replacements; the Vivid E9 Cardiovascular Ultrasound system featuring XDclear technology, which enhances image quality in two-dimensional, four-dimensional, color and Doppler photos. The system is designed to help shorten ultrasound exam times and enhance diagnostic confidence in adult and pediatric echo cardiogram labs, during interventions, or in the operating room; and the Invenia Automated Breast Ultrasound System (ABUS), designed to detect cancer in women  with very dense breasts. GE claims its ABUS can improve breast cancer detection by up to 35.7 percent over mammography alone.

In December, GE unveiled its Revolution CT at the Radiological Society of North America’s 99th Annual Meeting in Chicago, Ill. The product converges wide coverage, high spatial resolution (clear image) and high temporal resolution (speed) into a single computed tomography (CT) system that can capture a motion-free image of the human heart in just one beat.

Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in April 2014, the Revolution CT can be used for practically all clinical applications, and features capabilities such as whole heart scans even in patients with a high heart rate, low-dose whole organ (16 centimeter) scans using dynamic acquisition modes, and whole brain perfusion and dynamic CT angiography at low dose for stroke assessment.

“This is really an all-in-one scanner,” said Ricardo C. Cury, M.D., chairman of Radiology and director of Cardiac Imaging at Baptist Health South Florida in Miami. “Diagnostic quality images are now possible in challenging patients like those with high heart rates, which is a significant advancement. The ability of Revolution to combine coverage, spatial and temporal resolution in a single scanner will translate to many clinical applications and potentially new applications in the future.”

GE also cleared a path for future progress through the acquisition of Unisyn Medical Technologies’ Transactional Business, and $1.06 billion purchase of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.’s HyClone cell culture (sera and media), gene modulation and magnetic beads businesses. The trio will be rolled into GE Healthcare’s life science sector, expanding its bioprocessing manufacturing presence in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Thermo Fisher, the world’s biggest supplier of lab testing equipment by market value, agreed to sell the businesses in November last year to secure European regulatory approval for its $13.6 billion deal to buy Life Technologies Corp., which makes genetic testing and mapping equipment.

HyClone is used to manufacture vaccines and drugs that treat diseases including cancer and arthritis. GE Healthcare has a cell biology business performing similar work.

“Life Sciences is one of our strongest and fastest-growing business areas, driven by the world’s demand for improved diagnostics and new, safer medicines,” John Dineen, CEO of GE Healthcare, said when the deal was announced. “It is a business that we have been expanding over the last several years.”

GE’s biomanufacturing business accounts for $1 billion of the company’s $18 billion in healthcare revenue. The three newly acquired Thermo Fisher businesses generated a combined estimated revenue of roughly $250 million in 2013.

GE has been building out its life sciences operations since its 2003 acquisition of Amersham plc. In 2011, the company acquired cellular-imaging supplier Applied Precision Inc., and last year it bought biomolecular manufacturing technology supplier Xcellerex Inc.

$18.29 Billion ($147.3B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 54,000 (305,000)

Jeffrey R. Immelt has quite the selection of unconventional calling cards at his disposal: MRI machines, steam turbines, hybrid locomotives, transformers, panelboards, fuel dispensors, capacitors and inverters.

But last fall, the longtime General Electric chairman and CEO chose a Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet engine to mark his company’s admission to the big (data) league. Flanked by the 12-foot-tall contraption on a small stage in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, Immelt unveiled an initiative dubbed the “Industrial Internet” (also known as the “Sensor Revolution” or “Internet of Things”)—an open, global network connecting people, data and machines. Before letting audience members marvel at the magnificence of the Boeing engine, Immelt announced nine new technologies/services focused on product diagnostics software and analytics that will help the world’s airlines, hospitals, railroads, manufacturers and utility companies increase productivity and eliminate $150 billion in waste. The philosophy behind GE’s initiative is simple: Connecting industrial machinery to the Internet could boost efficiency across all global industries by 1 percent (it may not seem like much, but a 1 percent gain in proficiency could save the global energy industry $66 billion, the healthcare industry $63 billion and the aviation industry $30 billion, according to GE).

“It’s about making infrastructure more intelligent and advancing the industries critical to the world we live in,” Immelt explained to shareholders in the company’s 2012 annual report. “…it’s about the future of industry—energy, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing. It’s about making the world work better.”

GE estimates the Industrial Internet could bolster global productivity gains by as much as $15 trillion by 2030. Norfolk Southern, for instance, already is using a GE data/analytics system to optimize train and cargo movement across its rail network; executives estimate that every 1 mph increase in network speed could save the company $200 million in annual capital and operating expenses. Similarly, the Hospital Operation Management (HOM) solutions program launched in Manhattan’s Mt. Sinai Hospital in 2009 enables the renowned healthcare institution to track 15,000 assets and has improved patient throughput by 10 percent. The HOM system tracks various hospital data—from bed assignments, equipment management, transportation and workflow—to ensure quality patient care is provided.

Besides turning it into a serious player among the big data firms, GE’s Industrial Internet effort could help the multinational conglomerate solidify its presence in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that seldom attracted investment dollars when Immelt became CEO in 2001. The area now generates roughly $3 billion in annual revenue for GE, and Immelt expects that number to double in the next few years as its investments in technology and personnel spawn mini-$1 billion franchises in Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria and South Africa—four of the Dark Continent’s most promising markets.

“Strategy is about making choices, building competitive advantage and planning for the future. Strategy is not set through one act or one deal. Rather, we build it sequentially through making decisions and enhancing capability,” Immelt wrote in his
annual letter to investors. “A GE annual report has never fully featured software and Africa. Today, we feel they are essential and we can lead. Our ability to create our own future is why GE can win in any environment.”

Even in economically challenging settings. Last year, the company’s segment profits grew 11 percent to $22.9 billion and cash from operating activities jumped 48 percent to $17.8 billion, according to GE’s 2012 annual report. Though its full-year revenues remained flat at $147.35 billion, the firm nevertheless navigated a tough turnaround, returning $12.4 billion of cash to investors through dividends and stock buybacks, and growing its total shareholder revenue 21 percent, well ahead of the 16 percent growth among most S&P 500 entities. In addition, GE’s market cap swelled by $30 billion, and its backlog (orders booked) increased to a record high of $210 billion.

Much of the company’s financial good fortune last year was driven by growth in its seven business segments, all of which posted a profit for the first time since 2006. Oil & Gas led the charge, generating an additional 16 percent in revenue ($15.2 billion), followed by Energy Management, which boosted earnings 15.4 percent ($7.4 billion), Transportation, which improved its balance sheet by 14.8 percent ($5.6 billion) and Power & Water, which generated the most revenue for GE ($28.3 billion) in 2012 but posted the fourth-lowest surplus (8 percent). Healthcare, on the other hand, barely enhanced its earnings but was the third-highest moneymaker, collecting $18.29 billion in the 12-month period ending Dec. 31. The total represented a 1.1 percent increase compared with the $18.08 billion the segment generated for GE in 2011.

Healthcare’s profits were considerably more sound, rising 4.1 percent to $2.9 billion on higher volume and increased productivity. GE executives attributed the growth in both revenue and profits to improved equipment sales and robust product demand, particularly in emerging markets.

Such demand compelled GE to open its first customer innovation center last spring in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in southwest China, a region that has morphed into a leading economic, transportation and communication center. In 2007, the World Bank christened Chengdu a “benchmark city for investment…in inland China.”

Located in the west park of the ancient city’s High-tech Industrial Development Zone, the $80 million innovation center features 360,590 square feet of R&D and office space, 30 laboratories and state-of-the-art equipment designed to help GE tackle some of China’s most critical environmental and healthcare needs, including shale gas drilling technology, green energy and industrial automation solutions.

Seven weeks after opening the Chengdu Innovation Center, GE unveiled a second facility 1,859 miles to the northeast in Xi’an (the capital of Shaanxi Province) to develop products and solutions in lighting, aviation and energy.

“We believe the customer innovation centers we have built in China’s hinterland is a perfect fit to the country’s ongoing shift in growth pattern,” GE Greater China President/CEO Mark Hutchinson said at the Xi’an Innovation Center opening in mid-July 2012. “These facilities are more than regular corporate R&D institutions. They will play an instrumental role in building out much-needed local innovation capabilities in these areas, enabling a healthy innovation ecosystem essential for sustainable growth.”

The innovation centers, however, are just one component of GE Healthcare’s overall plans for The Middle Kingdom. The
company hopes to increase its small city/rural area sales from 20 percent to 50 percent in less than five years through dozens of new product releases, a majority of which will be targeted at China’s primary care market. To achieve its goal, the company
intends to help small medical facilities (generating between 5-12 million yuan) finance their purchases, GE Healthcare China President and CEO Duan Xiaoyin told the Chinese news website Morningwhistle.com last fall.

GE Healthcare executives also solidified the division’s emerging markets footprint last year with the purchase of Xpro, a Brazilian manufacturer of interventional X-ray equipment. GE added the company to its Detection & Guidance Solutions segment, which grosses $2 billion globally, employs about 1,700 people and markets various devices and related medical equipment in the United States, China, France, Hungary and India. The deal gives GE targeted, lower-cost devices it can sell to the developing world through its global marketing reach.

The company entered a few unconventional markets as well, opening a new $4.6 million cell science laboratory center in
Cardiff, Wales, to develop novel technologies for drug development, cell bioprocessing and cell therapy; introducing a pocket-sized ultrasound visualization tool (Vscan) in Mexico, and becoming an official partner of the XXX Olympiad (Summer Games) in London, United Kingdom.

The polyclinic GE built in London’s Olympic Village gave the company unparalleled exposure to more than 200 potential markets and 10,000 future customers. The facility was equipped with the latest imaging technology, including two advanced magnetic resonance imaging scanners (Discovery MR750w wide bore 3T and Optima MR450w wide bore 1.5T, both with GEM Suite), the Discovery 750HD computed tomography (CT) scanner, the Discovery XR656 wireless digital X-ray system, and the Venue 40 and LogicIQ E9 ultrasound scanners. Several MAC 5500 electrocardiography (ECG) diagnosis systems also were on hand to monitor, analyze and interpret heart rhythms, and the Centricity RIS/PACS system provided necessary clinical data to medical staff.

GE received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the CT750 HD FREEdom scanner about a week before the Olympic games began last July. The CT750 was built to address the “foremost challenges in cardiac CT such as radiation dose, calcium blooming, coronary motion, high heart rates, plaque composition and myocardial perfusion, according to the company.

“We believe the traditional challenges of cardiac CT are in large part beatable with a smarter software and electronic approach,” Steve Gray, vice president and general manager for CT and advantage workstation at GE Healthcare, said at the time of approval. “FREEdom Edition offers physicians a new tool to help overcome coronary motion, and various artifacts that may stand in the way of a highly accurate, confident cardiac diagnosis in a variety of clinical settings.”

The CT750 features exclusive FREEdom technologies (Fast Registered Energies and ECG) that provide a three-prong solution to traditional cardiac CT challenges: Motion FREEdom, which corrects unwanted motion through a program called SnapShot Freeze; Calcium FREEdom, which gives doctors a better view of the body’s coronary system (using Gemstone Spectral Imaging); and Horizon FREE opportunities, which allow clinicians to better evaluate the makeup of plaque material and more accurately calculate blood delivery to capillary beds.

GE claims that SnapShot Freeze can help significantly reduce coronary motion and overcome the inherent limitation of all hardware-only solutions. By precisely detecting vessel motion and velocity, SnapShot Freeze can determine actual vessel position and intelligently correct the effects of motion during cardiac CT exams. Bench-top evaluation of SnapShot Freeze intelligent motion correction has demonstrated that the technology can achieve a 58-millisecond (ms) equivalent gantry rotation speed, which is four to six times faster than hardware-only gantry rotation speed alone. This translates to a 29-ms effective temporal resolution, which achieves for the first time a cardiac CT temporal sampling similar to the frame rate of a cath lab.

The Discovery CT750 HD FREEdom Edition also is the first cardiac spectral CT scanner that merges GE’s SnapShot Pulse technology with GSI’s fast kV switching, allowing for a registered spectral CT dataset. Spectral CT takes traditional CT beyond anatomy to create images of quantitative material density, which then can be synthesized into monochromatic energies.
Monochromatic images have key advantages in virtually beam hardening artifact-free images, and improving contrast-to-noise at a given dose. For the first time, coronary images with calcium suppression are possible for challenging patients with high calcium burden. Additionally, GSI Cardiac enables investigations into new areas of CT coronary plaque assessment and quantitative myocardial perfusion.

Other notable product releases last year included the Optima NM/CT 640, the Optima MR360 Advance, the Brivo MR355 Inspire and the FlightPlan for Liver.

The Optima NM/CT 640 integrates the latest general purpose camera with a newly developed four-slice CT designed for hybrid rather than standalone use. The CT is available in 2.5-millimeter and 5-millimeter slice thickness, and can be fully upgraded on location from a Discovery NM630 SPECT only system. The Optima MR360 Advance is a premium 1.5T system designed to enhance the patient’s magnetic resonance (MR) experience while improving productivity and clinical confidence, the company asserts.  The system’s technology is engineered to balance refined workflow capabilities and a wide range of clinical applications. The Brivo MR355 is similar to the Optima MR360, featuring a 1.5T MR system with various clinical applications but also includes a new “caring design” to improve patient comfort.

Approved in late November, GE’s FlightPlan for Liver is designed to simplify complicated liver embolizations. Using a catheter tip, doctors need only select a hypervascular tumor on a 3-D image and let the software highlight the specific blood vessels traveling from the catheter to the lesion’s vicinity. The highlighted vessels can be used as a 3-D roadmap and superimposed on a live fluoroscopic image to help guide the catheter into the target artery.

FlightPlan for Liver has commercially been available in Europe, Latin America and Asia since 2011, and has been installed in more than 30 healthcare institutions in 10 countries.

One of the year’s most significant coups occurred shortly before Christmas with the licensing of its investigative Alzheimer’s imaging agent flutemetamol to Merck.

Injected into patients before PET (positron emission tomography) scans, flutemetamol detects beta-amyloid deposits in the brain, a major sign of Alzheimer’s destructive advance. Merck agreed to test the agent with certain clinical trial participants taking MK-8931, a hoped-for blockbuster Alzheimer’s treatment. The imaging agent already has shown promise as far as Phase III, detecting beta amyloid with a 75 percent to 100 percent sensitivity and 99 percent to 100 percent specificity.

The deal pairs the agent with Merck’s drug, which works by inhibiting an enzyme that aids in developing amyloid beta peptide, thereby cutting back amyloid.

After using flutemetamol to choose trial participants, Merck will evaluate the agent as a possible future companion diagnostic, Senior Vice President Darryle Schoepp said.

“There is a serious unmet need for a reliable method for measuring beta amyloid deposits to help physicians diagnose Alzheimer’s disease at its different stages and study its progression,” Schoepp said in a statement, adding that GE’s agent holds the promise of marking the often clandestine disease and guiding treatment.

2. GE Healthcare
$18.1 Billion ($147.3B total)

KEY EXECUTIVES:
Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman & CEO, General Electric
John Dineen, President & CEO, GE Healthcare
Marcelo Mosci, President & CEO, GE Healthcare Americas
Tom Gentile, President & CEO, Healthcare Systems
Reinaldo A. Garcia, President & CEO, GE Healthcare International
Jim Davis, VP & General Manager, Global MR
Mark Vachon, President and CEO, Global Diagnostic Imaging
Jan De Witte, President and CEO, Integrated IT Solutions
Kieran Murphy, President and CEO, Life Sciences
Pascale Witz, President and CEO, Medical Diagnostics
Joe Shrawder, President and CEO, Surgery

NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 46,000 (304,000)

GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS: Fairfield, Conn.

To say that multinational industrial giant General Electric (GE) is a prolific innovator with a global focus would be an understatement. It seems as if the company—whether you’re talking about jet engines to lift the world’s largest passenger planes or lights that give New York City’s Times Square its famous glow—is motivated by the relentless pursuit of creating the proverbial “better mousetrap.” That creative inspiration fuels the conglomerate’s Healthcare division’s pursuits as well.

The company, as usual, posted a string of new technology in the sectors the Healthcare division (based in the United Kingdom) serves—medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, and patient monitoring systems, as well as others.

Among the new product rollouts for the 2011 fiscal year (ended Dec. 31) was the Mavric SL, a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging technique for imaging the joints of patients with metallic implants, in response to a growing clinical need for assessing soft tissues in the vicinity of joint replacements (called arthroplasty in surgical lingo) and metallic instrumentation. The technology was developed in collaboration with Stanford University and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, N.Y.

“The ability of MR to image tissues adjacent to metal implants and fixation hardware is significantly hampered by severe image artifacts,” said Jacques Coumans, general manager of Premium MR at GE Healthcare. “Mavric SL is designed to help reduce these artifacts as the number of procedures requiring MR imaging near metal continues to grow.”

Combining acquisition and reconstruction techniques, the system is intended to help reduce artifacts caused by the presence of metal in both in-plane and through-plane dimensions compared to conventional MR imaging techniques. The information may be useful in helping physicians to image tissue adjacent to the metal instrumentation and take action to correct complications from joint implants.

GE Healthcare also unveiled what it claims is the first interventional X-ray system designed to capture the advantages of both floor- and ceiling-mounted systems. The Discovery IGS 730 is neither floor- nor ceiling-mounted, but enables full patient access without the need to suspend the system above the patient. It has the mobility of a C-arm with the power and image quality of a fixed system. This laser-guided, motorized mobile gantry creates an interventional environment without boundaries. It allows complete access to the patient and unlimited parking capability, while creating sterility for a flexible and secure operating room environment, according to the company. The unique gantry comes with a new wide bore design, which allows for steep angles and ease of use in 3-D acquisition, especially for large patients. The C-arm is mounted on an advanced guided vehicle (AGV), a motorized and fully mobile system. Based on laser guidance, the AGV can move freely from imaging position to parking or back-out positions, using predefined trajectories to provide total patient access.

Another noteworthy product release was the Mini Telemetry System, which received 510(k) clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The system addresses the growing demand for mobility during labor. It is designed to enable a more ambulatory experience for the mother and increase caregiver efficiency, while ensuring continuous monitoring. Among its features are audio monitoring of fetal heart rate via either transmitter speaker or headphones; compact size; one-touch marking of the baby’s movements; and multiple monitoring modes: fetal heart rate, uterine activity and ECG monitoring.

The FDA also cleared the Optima CT660 lower-dose computed tomography (CT) system for fast, high performance imaging for patients in a variety of clinical settings, including cardiac, neurological, emergency room and routine CT; the AngioViz imaging system for vascular anatomy; the GEM (Geometry Embracing Method) Suite of surface coils designed for use with the Optima MR450w 1.5T wide bore magnetic resonance imaging system that helps technologists reposition patients less often and cover more anatomy; and the Optima MR430s 1.5T musculoskeletal magnetic resonance system for imaging of the arm, including the elbow, wrist and hand, or the leg, including the knee, ankle and foot.

In a move that surprised many in the medical device industry, GE moved the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing to tap growth in China. The headquarters will move from Waukesha, Wis., amid a broader parent-company plan to invest about $2 billion across China, including opening six “customer innovation” and development centers. The company said no jobs were cut as a result. The move followed the introduction earlier in 2011 of GE Healthcare’s “Spring Wind” initiative to develop and distribute medical products and services in China. More than 20 percent of the X-ray unit’s new products will be developed in China. The division expects double-digit growth rates as China converts from film and analog to digital X-ray technology. About $1.1 billion of GE Healthcare’s sales came from the China market in 2010. The company wants to keep its leading position in providing medical devices targeted at higher-end Chinese customers, and also break into China’s growing market for primary health care, a key goal of the Chinese government’s healthcare reform plans. To do that, GE Healthcare plans to boost China-based research, enabling it to introduce at least 20 products for the local market during the next three years.

With a multi-billion dollar division such as GE Healthcare, you can bet that acquisitions also are part of the mix. They certainly were in fiscal 2011.

In April the company acquired the assets of privately held Steady State Imaging, a Minneapolis, Minn.- based company that develops novel magnetic resonance imaging technology. Terms of agreement were not disclosed. Through that acquisition, GE Healthcare expanded its current advanced technology portfolio with the addition of the University of Minnesota’s sweep imaging with fourier transform (SWIFT) method, which allows the visualization of tendons, ligaments and other tissues not normally seen using conventional imaging methods. The SWIFT method has gained interest among MRI researchers for its potential for imaging in areas near the lungs and other parts of the body where conventional MRI is not typically effective.

“The fact that a startup company based on University of Minnesota technology is being acquired by an industry leader like GE Healthcare is tremendous news,” said Tim Mulcahy, vice president for research at the University of Minnesota. “This not only helps fulfill our mission of moving researcher inventions to the public domain as quickly as possible, it also validates the innovative work of … the University’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research.”

Also in April, GE acquired Issaquah, Wash.-based Applied Precision Inc., a supplier of cellular imaging technologies for the fast-growing cell biology and biomedical research sectors. The acquisition of Applied Precision will allow GE Healthcare to expand its offering of products and services for pharmaceutical and life-science research. Applied Precision develops and manufactures high-resolution and super-resolution microscopy instruments with software and data visualization tools that provide scientists with detailed information on the structure and behavior of live and fixed cells.

During the year, GE renewed its collaborative relationship with STERIS Corp. to continue offering interventional suites optimized with products from both companies. Combining the companies’ technologies provides physicians with a unified system for imaging and surgical procedures in integrated and hybrid operating rooms. The relationship brings together GE Healthcare’s Innova imaging systems for single plane with custom‐designed high-definition 360-degree suites from STERIS featuring LED surgical grade lighting, video‐switching and visualization systems, and equipment management solutions. The two companies will collaborate to facilitate room planning and installation for seamlessly integrated interventional suites tailored to the precise needs of each facility.

In December, GE Capital (the company’s financial services division) and GE Healthcare invested in C8 MediSensors Inc., a privately held developer of non-invasive continuous glucose monitors for diabetic patients. The investment was made through the GE Healthymagination Fund, an equity fund that makes investments in highly promising healthcare technology companies. The investment is aligned with GE Healthcare’s expanding focus on disease management solutions that can improve healthcare globally, as well as GE’s broader healthymagination initiative, which focuses on reducing cost, increasing patient access and improving quality in healthcare. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. As many as 552 million people, or about 1 in 10 adults worldwide, could have diabetes by 2030, according to a recent report by the International Diabetes Federation. Additionally, as many as 183 million people may be unaware that they have diabetes, according to the report, and the highest proportion of cases is among those ages 40 to 59. C8 MediSensors has combined their proprietary technology with Raman spectroscopy to commercialize a non-invasive glucose monitor that can improve the lives of diabetics by giving them a continuous view of their glucose levels without the pain, inconvenience and high cost of invasive glucose monitoring. MediSensors is pursuing the European market before seeking regulatory approval in the United States.

The 2011 fiscal year also brought executive transition.

GE Healthcare promoted Kieran Murphy to succeed current Life Sciences president and CEO Peter Ehrenheim who retired. Murphy was GE Healthcare’s head of Global Commercial Operations, Life Sciences. Kieran joined GE upon its acquisition of Whatman plc, where he was CEO, in 2008. Ehrenheim retired after a career with the company beginning in 1983 as a mechanical designer in R&D with Pharmacia, which was acquired in 1997 by Amersham International. In 2003 Peter was appointed to the Amersham executive team and upon its acquisition by GE in 2004, he was promoted to vice president and CEO, Life Sciences.

Jan De Witte who was serving as president and CEO of GE Healthcare’s Performance Solutions division, also was named president and CEO of its Healthcare IT business. De Witte, who reports to GE Healthcare President and CEO John Dineen, succeeds Vishal Wanchoo who was named senior vice president of Growth Initiatives for GE India. De Witte was named head of Performance Solutions in June 2010. He has served in a number of strategic technology and business leadership roles since he joined GE in 1999. He has a diverse background in services, digital business strategy, supply chain, manufacturing, quality and Lean Six Sigma. De Witte graduated from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Flanders, Belgium, with a Master’s of Science Degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering, and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.

GE’s healthcare division also gained some executive leadership from its highly successful aviation unit. GE Aviation’s Tom Gentile joined Healthcare as president and CEO of Healthcare Systems. Mike Swinford was named president and CEO of a new Global Services business. Gentile was vice president of GE Aviation’s Services division. He succeeded Omar Ishrak, who left GE to lead Medtronic Inc. as CEO. Gentile was a 13-year GE veteran and recently spent three years leading a team that transformed GE’s Aviation services business into a global $7 billion platform. Before Aviation, he held a series of leadership roles in GE Capital’s businesses in the United States, France and Australia, overseeing key acquisitions, consumer product launches and driving profitable growth. Gentile earned his bachelor’s degree in economics and his MBA from Harvard University, and studied international relations at the London School of Economics. Swinford was services leader for GE Healthcare’s North American division. His new role puts him at the helm of Global Services, a new business that will be responsible for driving GE Healthcare’s service strategy globally, creating new service growth platforms across product lines and expanding the capabilities of each region’s service operations. He has held a series of services, quality and supply chain leadership roles in GE Healthcare. He joined the company in 1992 through the Manufacturing Management Program and holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla.

But what was the result of all this innovation and corporate machination? Increased revenue, of course. GE’s Healthcare division revenues were $18.1 billion in 2011, an increase of $1.2 billion, or 7 percent, due to higher volume and the weaker U.S. dollar. The revenue increase was split between equipment sales and services. Revenue increased in the United States and international markets, with the strongest growth in emerging markets. Segment profit of $2.8 billion in 2011 increased 2 percent, or approximately $100 million.

For GE, full-year revenues were $147.3 billion, up 7 percent. Full-year net earnings were $14.2 billion in 2011 ($1.23 per common share), compared with $11.6 billion in 2010, up 22 percent.

$16.9 Billion ($150.2B total)</
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 46,000 (304,000)

Jeffrey R. Immelt has always considered himself a tough-minded optimist. But sometimes, even the most steadfast of idealists find it difficult to maintain an eternally positive attitude, particularly during times of personal challenge. Immelt’s rough patch occurred at the height of the Great Recession, when a freefalling global economy obliterated the world’s financial markets, wiping out billions of dollars in corporate profits and mutilating commercial investment portfolios. The crisis forced Immelt to make some difficult decisions in order to ensure the future of General Electric (GE), the world’s third-largest conglomerate. He slashed dividends. He sold GE stock (both to the public and billionaire businessman Warren Buffett). He cut jobs. He even began selling chunks of the company, including business units he acquired, though some retailed for a loss.

It was the toughest time of Immelt’s professional life. But, as optimists often do, Immelt found a silver lining in the storm clouds that were darkening his days as chairman and CEO. In the company’s 2008 annual report, Immelt encouraged shareholders to think of the economic maelstrom as a golden opportunity, a chance to reset the company’s priorities, its focus and its long-term goals.

“I think this environment presents an opportunity of a lifetime,” Immelt wrote in the 2008 annual report. “We get a chance to reset the core of GE and focus on what we do best. We can reset expectations for our performance. And we can participate in the changes required in the broader economy. The current crisis offers the challenge of our lifetime. [In the future], successful companies won’t just ‘hunker down,’ they will seek out the new opportunities in a reset world.”

GE can hardly be accused of “hunkering down” over the last three years to wait for the economic tempest to pass. Besides investing nearly $3 billion in restructuring and closing more than 400 facilities worldwide, the company invested in and “reset” the focus for its financial services business, GE Capital. According to Immelt, the unit tightened its underwriting standards, shifted teams from origination to collection and maintained a proactive risk management focus in an effort to become a diversely funded and smaller, more focused finance subsidiary.

GE hit the reset button in other areas as well. The company increased spending in research and development by 54 percent since 2008, and simplified its portfolio, selling its security business (GE Security) to United Technologies for $1.82 billion and relinquishing control of NBC Universal to Comcast for $6.5 billion in cash. In total, the company purged about half of its portfolio since the start of the recession, a move that Immelt insists was necessary in order to strengthen businesses in industries with the best prospects for future growth: life sciences, molecular medicine, renewable energy, avionics, oil and gas, and water. Between August 2010 and February 2011, GE beefed up its product portfolio in these areas with five acquisitions worth about $8 billion. “We will be disciplined in our acquisitions,” Immelt wrote in the company’s 2010 annual report. “They will increase our competitiveness in industries we know well.”

GE certainly was disciplined in its approach to mergers and acquisitions over the last year. Executives were selective in the companies they purchased, focusing only on firms that would boost their product portfolio and give them a competitive advantage over their rivals. Thus, it was little surprise to analysts when the company announced the $3 billion purchase of gas engine manufacturer Dresser Inc., or the $1.6 billion acquisition of retail credit card assets from Citigroup Inc. The procurement of both Opal Software and the energy control systems business unit of Canadian engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin wasn’t completely unexpected, either—Immelt is positioning GE to grab a sizable chunk of the estimated $4 trillion global infrastructure market over the next four years.

Immelt is using a similar strategy for increasing market share in the medical industry as well. The company’s healthcare division, GE Healthcare, acquired three businesses last year to increase its market share and better serve its customers: Compagnie française de Gestion de Services de Santé—Sanesco SA, Orbotech Medical Solutions Ltd., and Clarient Inc.

Executives believe the Sanesco acquisition can help GE Healthcare strengthen its position in the healthcare consulting services sector and better respond to the needs of Frenchcustomers.

Purchasing the Boulogne-Billancourt, France-based healthcare advisory services company also allowed GE to bolster its ability to provide both practitioners and patients with new ways of organizing, measuring and managing healthcare delivery.

Orbotech was an easy choice—the company, a subsidiary of Yavne, Israel-based Orbotech Ltd.—makes cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors used in GE Healthcare’s Alcyone nuclear medicine technology, a design that is based on combining CZT detectors, focused pin-hole collimation, stationary data acquisition and 3-D reconstruction to improve workflow, dose management, and overall image quality. The CZT detectors directly convert gamma rays into digital signals, eliminating the need for photomultiplier tubes, but maintaining high stopping power to deliver improved energy, spatial and temporal resolution, according to the company.

At $9 million (plus an additional $5 million if certain performance-based milestones are met), the Orbotech merger most certainly was a bargain compared with some of the company’s past acquisitions. And, it came with a bonus—the transaction settled a dispute between the two companies over a pricing and supply agreement that expired in 2007.

The price tag for Clarient Inc. was significantly higher, but executives are convinced the $580 million is money well-spent, considering the partnership is expected to foster the development of new tools for the diagnosis and characterization of cancer. The development and commercialization of these tools certainly could help GE Healthcare cash in on an anticipated bonanza in the global market for cancer-profiling products and services. Industry data indicate the worldwide market for these products is expected to grow from roughly $15 billion in 2009 to $47 billion by 2015.

“Adding Clarient’s technology to our portfolio will accelerate our expansion into cancer diagnostics and therapy tools while enhancing our current diagnostic and life sciences offerings,” GE Healthcare President and CEO John Dineen said when the Clarient merger was announced last fall. “We believe that combining the skills of the two companies will allow us to help pathologists and oncologists make more confident clinical decisions, bring improvements in the quality of patient care and lower the costs of disease management.”

GE Healthcare’s quest to secure its future wasn’t strictly limited to mergers and acquisitions. The unit entered new geographic markets in 2010 and formed a new company with Intel Corporation that will focus on wireless remote healthcare services and independent living. GE created the new company late last summer through the combined assets of GE Healthcare’s Home Health division and Intel’s Digital Health Group. The joint venture—owned equally by both companies and based in the greater Sacramento, Calif., area—is tasked with developing and marketing products, services and technologies that help people live independently both at home and in assisted living communities. Executives said the company will focus on three major segments: chronic disease management, independent living and assistive technologies.

GE Healthcare formed another new company in late April with Nycomed, a global pharmaceutical company that provides drugs for gastrointestinal, respiratory and inflammatory diseases as well as pain, osteoporosis and tissue management. The two entities formed a company based in Moscow, Russia, that will market and distribute GE’s computed tomography (CT), X-ray and magnetic resonance contrast media products in the former communist nation and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). “This joint venture . . . signals GE Healthcare’s plans to grow in Russia and CIS,” said Reinaldo Garcia, who, at the time, served as GE Healthcare President and CEO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “It will bring GE Healthcare closer to its customers in Russia . . .”

GE did indeed grow closer to its customers in Russia last year, but its joint venture with Nycomed was only partially responsible for bridging the gap. Some of the credit belongs to GE’s joint venture with Russian Technologies (Rostekhnologii) to manufacture, assemble, sell and service high-tech medical diagnostic equipment. The joint venture, according to GE, is starting with production of CT scanners but will expand to other diagnostic equipment such as angiographs, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, digital X-rays, positron emission tomography (PET), gamma cameras and medical devices. The joint venture may use an assembly facility in Moscow that produced the first Russian-assembled 16-slice CT scanner (through Nov. 30, the scanner had performed more than 2,000 exams). Components for the Russian-produced diagnostic equipment and medical devices initially will be sourced from GE, but later will shift to local suppliers.

Building on a memorandum of understanding the parties signed in June 2010, the agreement with Russian Technologies reflects GE’s deep commitment to Russia, a major growth market for the company. “We are working with our Russian partners to bring technology to Russia and develop it locally,” GE International President and CEO Ferdinando Beccalli-Falco noted. “These strategic partnerships are examples of GE’s long-term commitment to Russia and our ‘company to country’ strategy, in which we work directly with governments to satisfy their needs in rapidly developing markets.”

GE Healthcare satisfied a need in another rapidly-developing market last year with the opening of its first factory in Brazil. Located in Contagem, a city in the southeast section of the country, the plant has produced X-ray and mammography equipment as well as remanufactured diagnostic imaging equipment since mid-July 2010. This year, the factory is expanding its manufacturing capabilities to include PET, CT, MRI and monitoring systems.

More than 200 miles to the south, on an island in Guanabara Bay (near Rio de Janiero), GE will employ a team of 200 researchers and engineers to develop advanced technologies for the oil and gas, renewable energy, mining, rail and aviation industries. The company is building a $100 million Global Research Center that, when fully operational, will feature lab space, offices and conference rooms, and a GE Global Learning facility where company employees from Latin America, industry leaders, scholars and government representatives can share best practices. The 140,000-square-foot center is expected to be completed in late 2012.

Immelt’s strategy of resetting priorities and the company’s core focus seems to be paying off for GE. Though its full-year earnings have not yet returned to pre-recession levels, they are headed in the right direction after a crippling drop in 2009. Net earnings climbed 8.5 percent in 2010 to $12.2 billion, and basic earnings per share rose 5 percent to $1.06, according to GE’s 2010 annual report. Total revenue, however, fell 3.3 percent to $150.2 billion.

Immelt attributes the company’s growth last year to the spate of tough decisions he made during the global financial crisis. The investments the company made in its financial division, for example, helped GE Capital Services increase its net earnings in 2010 by 123 percent to $3.3 billion. The various resets that have occurred over the last three years—the mergers, the portfolio exits, the investments, and the product introductions—all have helped Immelt achieve his vision of transforming GE into a more streamlined and focused technology infrastructure and financial services company.

Total 2010 revenue rose in two of GE’s five operating segments—NBC Universal and Home & Business Solutions. The NBC Universal segment generated $17 billion in revenue last year, a 9.5 percent increase compared with 2009, while Home & Business Solutions earned $8.64 billion for the company, a 2.4 percent increase compared with its 2009 totals. Revenue fell in the Energy Infrastructure segment (7.7 percent to $37.5 billion), the Technology Infrastructure division (1.7 percent to $37.8 billion) and GE Capital (5.4 percent to $47 billion).

GE Healthcare was the only division in the Technology Infrastructure segment to report an upswing in both revenue and profit last year. The division posted total revenue of $16.9 billion, a 5.5 percent increase compared with its 2009 total of $16 billion. Investments and new product introductions contributed to a 13.2 percent rise in profit to $2.7 billion, according to the 2010 annual report. The solid performance of the healthcare division, however, could not prevent an overall profit loss in the Technology Infrastructure segment—company data shows that profits fell 7 percent last year to $6.3 billion.

$16 Billion ($157B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 46,000 (304,000)

From light bulbs to refrigerators, jet engines to handheld ultrasounds, and transportation management to oil and gas discovery—and a slew of industries in between—General Electric is the quintessential American conglomerate. In fact, this year, Forbes magazine has rated GE the second-largest company in the world. Within its diverse product mix is, of course, one of the world’s largest medical technology companies: GE Healthcare.

GE’s shear size wasn’t enough to keep it immune from the effects of the worst recession the world has seen in generations. In fact, its breadth of product lines probably made it more vulnerable—GE Capital, Aviation, Consumer Appliances. You get the picture.

According to Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s chairman and CEO, the company wants to “help lead an American growth renewal.” Over the course of fiscal 2009, the company has tried to restructure and refine to stay competitive. Since 2008, GE has invested close to $3 billion in restructuring, closed more than 400 facilities, and cut its workforce by 10 percent in an effort to create a “leaner and more agile company.”
But Immelt is quick to caution that all this belt tightening isn’t without a goal and is leading to eventual growth in new markets, development of new products and the creation of jobs in previously untapped areas. GE plans to add nearly 1,200 jobs in Michigan over the next decade to accelerate the company’s capacity in manufacturing. Another 1,000 jobs are planned for Louisville, Ky., to make the next generation of smart appliances. In addition, expansion is planned for Mississippi, South Carolina, Ohio and other regions across the country.

Overall, the company’s full-year revenues decreased 14 percent to $156.8 billion. Full-year earnings from continuing operations were $11.2 billion, down 38 percent from $18.1 billion in 2008. Earnings per share were $1.03, down 42 percent from 2008. Overall segment profit fell 27 percent compared with 2008, largely due to a decline of 73 percent at GE Capital Finance and 28 percent at NBC Universal. Revenue for GE Healthcare was $16 billion, down from $17.4 billion in 2008. Profit for the division was $2.42 billion, down from $2.85 billion in the prior fiscal year.

Healthcare remains part of the company’s growth strategy. GE Healthcare plans to invest $6 billion by 2015 for lower-cost medical equipment and care around the world, at the same time increasing earnings at its medical systems and bioscience division. The company unveiled a program in 2009 modeled after GE’s “ecoimagination” marketing campaign and product development initiative into green technologies.

The company calls it “healthymagination.” The new program will focus on rural and emerging markets, developing low-cost equipment, as well as helping hospitals become more efficient and reduce costs. Roughly $3 billion will be spent on healthcare innovation that will help deliver improved care at a lower cost. In addition, the company plans $2 billion of financing and $1 billion in related GE technology and content to drive healthcare information technology and health in rural and underserved areas.

According to GE officials, the company will launch at least 50 basic products tailored to rural or emerging markets, such as the lightweight portable electrocardiograph machines the company has developed for India. According to industry analysts, it’s unlikely that such low-cost products will boost the company’s lackluster earnings in the near term. GE executives, however, believe the strategy will position them to benefit from healthcare-related stimulus spending and global population trends over the long haul. The program is in response to new opportunities the company has recognized in healthcare, officials said.

“Our newest innovations—low-cost digital X-ray machines, portable ultrasounds, more affordable cardiac equipment—will save costs for doctors, hospitals, the government, families and businesses. This will help level the playing field in healthcare. With our technology, rural and urban areas and developing countries can have access to the best technology, affordably,” Immelt said.

John Dineen, president and CEO of GE Healthcare said, it was the “right time to reposition” the business given the changes and challenges in the industry.

The division isn’t retreating from expansion completely, however. It built a new $165 million digital mammography production facility in North Greenbush, N.Y., in the Rensselaer Technology Park at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). The new 230,000-square-foot facility added 150 high-paying manufacturing jobs in Rensselaer County with an annual payroll of $10 million. While other GE businesses have a long history in New York, this was the first expansion of high-tech medical equipment manufacturing by a GE Healthcare operation in New York.

Leading the Diagnostic division’s efforts is Pascale Witz. She was named president and CEO of the division last year. In her most recent assignment, Witz led GE Healthcare’s Healthcare Systems Interventional business, which develops technologies to help physicians diagnose and treat disease earlier, faster and more accurately.

Another growth area that GE isn’t planning to ignore is the burgeoning field of home health, which analysts consistently point to as one of the next big blockbuster sectors for medical device development. In December, GE Healthcare bought Living Independently Group Inc., the provider of QuietCare, a passive monitoring system used to assist in the care of seniors. The acquisition follows the September 2008 announcement that GE Healthcare had acquired a minority ownership stake in Living Independently Group and that the two companies had agreed to market and co-develop the QuietCare technology globally. Financial terms were not disclosed.

QuietCare is a passive activity monitoring system that uses wireless sensors to non-intrusively track the daily patterns of seniors’ activities. QuietCare alerts caregivers to behavioral changes that may signal potential health issues or emergency situations, allowing earlier intervention.QuietCare is used in many assisted living facilities and senior communities across the United States, GE officials said. In April 2009, GE Healthcare and Intel announced an alliance to invest $250 million in the development of new technologies to assist independent living for seniors and patients with chronic diseases.

$17.4 Billion ($183B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 46,000 (323,000)

“2008 was a tough year, and we expect 2009 to be even tougher.” Those are frank words to hear from the CEO of a publicly traded, multinational corporation. In this case, when the company is as industrially and globally diverse as General Electric, the reality of the statement is particularly chilling.

$17 Billion ($172.7B total)
NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 46,000 (319,000)

In the face of FDA warning letters and cuts in imaging reimbursements by Medicare, GE Healthcare posted relatively modest gains in 2007. Though the year was a mixed bag, the healthcare imaging giant still holds on to the No. 2 spot on MPO’s list of Top 30 performing companies. The imaging industry has been fighting reimbursement cuts that were part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law in 2006.

GE Healthcare, based in Chalfont St. Giles, United Kingdom, is a leading maker of diagnostic imaging equipment, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound and computed tomography scanners. The company also makes cardiology diagnostic equipment as well as contrast agents used in imaging procedures. In addition, GE Healthcare manufactures clinical equipment such as patient monitors and ventilators; develops life-sciences technology for drug discovery; makes clinical and financial management software for healthcare providers; and provides a range of services from consulting to equipment financing for hospitals.

The company’s revenues rose 3% to $17 billion in 2007. Profit of $3.1 billion in 2007 was 3% lower than in 2006. These numbers are well short of the $20 billion in revenue and $4 billion in profit the company had predicted for 2007. The company said increased sales in the international diagnostic imaging, clinical systems and life-sciences businesses were partially offset by price pressures on US equipment sales and lower sales of surgical imaging equipment resulting from regulatory suspensions of equipment shipments. In January 2007, GE Healthcare executives signed a consent decree with the FDA prohibiting the manufacture and distribution of specified GE OEC Medical Systems X-ray surgical imaging systems at facilities in Salt Lake City, UT and Lawrence, MA until the devices and facilities have been shown to be compliant with the FDA’s current good manufacturing practice requirements.

The ban was lifted in early June this year and the FDA said the company had satisfied the agency’s correction requirements. The OEC 9900 Elite C-arm, a fluoroscopy device that uses X-rays to reveal real-time imagery of a patient’s internal structure, is the first product to receive manufacturing and shipping authorization.

“Coming out of this, we’re a better business,” remarked Pete McCabe, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Surgery. “The OEC 9900 C-arm is the most reliable product produced in our business’ 30-year history. Our quality system, alongside customer focus and technical innovations, is a foundation of our business. In the last year, we’ve been able to strengthen it to levels that will ensure we continue to differentiate our products and services as the best in the marketplace. We look forward to again being a leader in this highly competitive field.”

According to the company, every day, seven out of 10 surgeons rely on an OEC C-arm in their operating rooms. In fact, during GE Healthcare Surgery’s stop-ship, many customers held their equipment orders, some waiting more than 18 months, the company claimed. To respond to the demand, GE Healthcare Surgery has added additional shifts and resources to work through its backlog as quickly as possible, company officials said.

In November 2007, the company received another warning from the FDA. The agency sent a letter to the company citing defective devices discovered during FDA field tests that involved two GE Healthcare X-ray devices used in a hospital near New Orleans, LA and assembled at the company’s Pewaukee, WI facility. During the tests, systems were found in which the protective barrier was not in place during the X-ray process to intercept the X-ray beam as required by federal law.

In positive FDA-related news, GE Healthcare received FDA approval in August 2007 for its new mobile mammography for breast cancer screening. The mobile Senographe Essential is built on the company’s Senographe Essential platform, the next generation of GE’s full-field digital mammography systems. In May, the company received FDA clearance for its Carescape Patient Data Module for mobile patient monitoring.

To bolster the company’s inorganic growth and broaden its diagnostic offerings, GE had announced plans in January 2007 to acquire Abbott’s in-vitro and point-of-care diagnostic businesses for $8.13 billion. By July, however, the deal had fallen apart and the companies, whose boards both approved the merger, said they were unable to agree on final terms. In other merger news, GE Healthcare completed the acquisition of Allendale, NJ-based Dynamic Imaging, a developer of Web-based image and information management. The purchase will allow GE to expand its healthcare information technology offerings. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition builds on GE Healthcare’s strategy to combine early diagnosis with information technology to enable a new “early health” model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. The early health theme is one often cited by GE executives.

“Predict, diagnose, treat and monitor is common medical practice today, but now we don’t have to wait so long,” said Joe Hogan, senior vice president and CEO of GE Healthcare, during a meeting with press, industry analysts and physicians in May 2007. “The diagnostic tools are available today, and we can substantially change the overall system.”

GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt agreed.

“By doing a better job on diagnostics, you can do a better job of therapy. And that’s where we’re investing,” Immelt said during the same meeting. “High-field imaging, PET [positron emission tomography] scanning and other imaging tools are getting more effective. We’re working on the overall patient experience. We’re also working on taking more devices and imaging tools into the home.”

Immelt also said emerging markets would be another vehicle for GE Healthcare to expand its business. He noted China and India as the biggest emerging markets but also said the Middle East and Africa are changing even more rapidly. He said the company is building plants to manufacture healthcare products in Saudi Arabia to address a projected $20 billion market in the region by 2010.

For the first quarter of 2008, GE Healthcare had revenues of $3.9 billion for the three months ended March 31—almost identical to the same period last year. The firm said that the market remained volatile, with orders for diagnostic imaging down by 13% in the first quarter. However, GE remained optimistic, with international markets posting diagnostic imaging revenues that increased by 8%. Life-sciences sales in Europe were up by 24%. Overall profits for the quarter dropped 17% to $528 million from $637 million in 2007.

“Our focus on globalization has helped sustain the company during the US slowdown,” said Immelt.

Unfortunately, due to declining demand for medical imaging services, the company was forced to lay off hundreds of employees from its Waukesha, WI operations in June this year. GE Healthcare spokesman Brian McKaig said the layoffs would affect fewer than 400 employees, but he did not provide specific totals. McKaig said the medical imaging equipment manufacturer has been hurt by passage of the federal Deficit Reduction Act, which caps Medicare reimbursement levels for medical imaging procedures. McKaig also said in a statement that governments, insurance companies and state legislatures are taking a number of actions aimed at reducing the amount spent on imaging.

In other noteworthy personnel news, Mark Kramer, the former director of the Office of Combination Products at the FDA who had nearly two decades of experience at the agency, joined GE Healthcare in June 2007 as its new vice president of Regulatory Affairs. Kramer is tasked with leading the regulatory function for medical devices across GE Healthcare and will work closely with global regulatory bodies to formulate strategic business plans.

$16.6 Billion ($163B Total)

Key Executives:
Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman and CEO
Ferdinando “Nani” Beccalli-Falco, President & CEO, International
Joseph M. Hogan, President and CEO, GE Healthcare
Mark L. Vachon, President and CEO, Global Diagnostic Imaging, GE Healthcare
Omar S. Ishrak, President and CEO, Clinical Systems, GE Healthcare

No. of Employees: 319,000

World Headquarters: Fairfield, CT

GE Healthcare, the first General Electric business unit headquartered outside the United States (Chalfont St. Giles, United Kingdom), has distinguished itself by more than simple geography. With net sales in 2006 of $16.6 billion, the UK-based division reported a 9% bump in net sales compared to FY 2005. The healthcare division makes up a little more than 10% of GE’s staggering $163.4 billion in revenue for the year (an increase of 10%). GE Healthcare also reported a $3.1 billion profit for 2006, up from the $2.7 billion reported in 2005.

GE Healthcare, which employs 46,000, is comprised of the following primary business units: diagnostic imaging, global services, clinical systems, life sciences, medical diagnostics, integrated IT solutions and interventional cardiology and surgery.

“We have invested to build a substantial Healthcare business, which could double in size over the next five years,” GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt wrote in a letter to shareholders. “We are a leader in diagnostics with the capability to improve access to care, find diseases earlier and treat them more effectively. In 1996, our Healthcare business had $4 billion in revenues and $550 million in operating profit. We were basically a US diagnostic imaging company. The Healthcare results were buried as part of the ‘Technical Products and Services’ segment with a bunch of businesses no longer in GE. However, we believed that Healthcare would benefit from demographic forces and was in a great market for GE. We knew we could generate good returns, so we invested.”

For 2007, the company is predicting $20 billion in revenues and $4 billion in operating profit for its healthcare division.

In a move to further strengthen its healthcare portfolio and broaden its diagnostic offerings, GE announced plans in January to acquire Abbott’s in vitro and point-of-care diagnostic businesses for $8.13 billion. Abbott’s molecular diagnostics and diabetes care businesses were not part of the transaction.

Immelt called Abbott’s diagnostic business “the premier platform in this industry” and said the acquisition reflects GE Healthcare’s strategy to combine early diagnosis with information technology to promote an “early health” model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. The business units sold to GE generated approximately $2.7 billion in sales in 2006.

“Through this acquisition, we create the opportunity to integrate our broad-based competencies in diagnostics, life sciences and healthcare information technology,” said Joe Hogan, president and CEO GE Healthcare. Last year, both Hogan and Immelt outlined an aggressive strategy to build on opportunities in information technology and electronic health records.

For the first quarter of 2007, GE Healthcare’s revenues took a marginal dip compared to the same period last year. For the period ended March 31, revenues were $3.6 billion compared to $3.7 billion for 2005. However, profits for the quarter improved by 5% from $496 million in the prior year to $520 million this time around.

On a supplier note, in May, GE agreed to sell its plastics division to Saudi Arabia’s largest industrial company, Saudi Basic Industries Corp., for $11.6 billion. GE Plastics, based in Pittsfield, MA, is a $6.65 billion supplier of plastics used in healthcare, automotive, consumer electronics and other industries.

GE Healthcare reached an agreement with the FDA in January this year to halt production of some X-ray systems while the company works to resolve manufacturing problems. The deal applied to devices manufactured by the GE OEC Medical Systems units in Salt Lake City, UT and Lawrence, MA. The FDA found the facilities did not meet federal manufacturing standards and warned GE about the problems in a March 2005 letter. Subsequent inspections in August 2006 revealed that the company had not adequately fixed the problems.

According to GE, the company voluntarily stopped shipping the products in September last year.

The GE X-ray systems affected by the FDA order include the 9900 Elite C-Arm System, 9900 Elite NAV C-Arm System, 9800 C-Arm System, 2800 UroView System, 6800 MiniView System, Insta-Trak 3500 NAV System and ENTrak 2500 NAV System, as well as their components and accessories.

$12.1 Billion ($150B Total)
No. of Employees: 316,000

One of GE’s old slogans was “Bringing Good Things to Life,” and that continues to be the case in healthcare as the company continues to stress its healthcare unit while decreasing some of its slower growing units of the conglomerate.

The GE Healthcare Technologies portion of the division rose a steady 7% in fiscal 2005 while, overall, the GE Healthcare division, which includes the biosciences segment, jumped 13% to $15.2 billion, achieving its goal of $15 billion in revenue last year.

In 2005, CEO Joe Hogan returned to the post of the division after William Castell, the former CEO of Amersham, was given a token year at the helm before becoming chairman of the company and retiring. In 2004, GE had purchased Buckinghamshire, UK-based Amersham. During the one-year period Hogan was president and CEO of GE Healthcare Technologies.

The entire healthcare unit was spurred by Amersham, which was purchased in the second half of 2004 and contributed $800 million of revenue in fiscal 2005. While it was a healthy increase, the numbers did not match the 32% rise in sales in 2004, when the division received a bigger bump from the Amersham purchase.

The GE Healthcare Technologies unit provides medical imaging and information technologies, patient monitoring systems and healthcare services. The technologies unit generated 80% of revenue for the entire division with the other sector, GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences, reporting the remaining share. For 2005, GE continued to generate strong orders in computed tomography (CT), ultrasound and magnetic resonance (MR) orders, and especially strong demand from its Imagination Breakthrough products.

One of the biggest success stories for GE Healthcare was the LightSpeed VCT. The company installed the 500th product in the line in November 2005, making it the fastest selling product in the company’s history.

“The incredible success of GE’s LightSpeed VCT and its rapid adoption by physicians around the world is changing the way physicians diagnose and treat heart disease,” said Gene Saragnese, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare’s Molecular Imaging and CT business.

While being one of the more thriving units in GE’s world, it is one of the more profitable ones for the conglomerate—realizing about 10% of the company’s total profit for fiscal 2005.

After about a year of inactivity on the merger front, GE made two major purchases in the end of 2005 and halfway through 2006.

In the first part of 2006, the healthcare division continued to be viable with another double-digit rise in revenues of 10% to $3.7 billion with the quarter ending March 31. This year will also be the first full year of the reorganization, in which the conglomerate slashed the number of businesses from 11 to seven.

For fiscal 2006, GE Healthcare started with a bang by closing out the purchase of Burlington, VT-based IDX Systems Corporation in January for $1.2 billion. GE Healthcare officials said the purchase will accelerate efforts to seamlessly connect clinicians from physicians’ offices to hospitals with comprehensive, enterprise-wide electronic health record (EHR) solutions. With the purchase of IDX, the GE Healthcare IT business was renamed GE Healthcare Integrated ITO Solutions.

“GE and IDX have a shared vision on how to accelerate the adoption of electronic health records across the globe,” said Hogan. “We are extremely excited about joining with IDX and believe that our combined offerings are in line with where healthcare is headed and match the needs of our customers.”

Last month, in June, the unit continued to grow with the purchase of Biacore, an Uppsala, Sweden-based medical instruments maker, for $438 million.

GE Healthcare also had several collaborations in the last half of 2005 and first half of 2006, including a supply agreement with San Leandro, CA-based Alpha Innotech Corporation for imaging systems; Tirat Carmel, Israel-based inSightec for the ExAblate 2000, an ultrasound system that non-invasively treats uterine fibroids; and with St. Paul, MN-based St. Jude Medical on a project dealing with a cardiovascular ultrasound imaging system with fully integrated intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) imaging capabilities, intended for use in treating patients suffering from heart disease.

In addition to its acquisitions and collaborations, GE Healthcare released several new products after garnering several FDA approvals.

In October, the FDA okayed GE Healthcare’s Lunar iDXA, a new bone mineral density system designed to help doctors detect, diagnose and monitor treatment of osteoporosis more accurately and earlier in the disease process. The system also enables clinicians to simultaneously assess body composition and ascertain fat distribution.

“The new iDXA provides both excellent image quality and precise bone density measurements to help clinicians diagnose osteoporosis,” said Ken Faulkner, chief scientist for GE Healthcare’s Lunar business.

In March 2006, the healthcare unit received FDA approval on a pair of products: Innova 3131 (IQ) and 2121 (IQ) digital flat panel Biplane Imaging Systems. The company boasted that these are the first systems available that will cover the full size of the patient’s lateral and frontal anatomy simultaneously for a variety of cardiovascular and neurovascular image-guided interventional procedures.

The introduction of the systems is part of GE’s move to double its compact ultrasound business, with the goal of delivering more than 5,000 compact ultrasound systems worldwide in 2006.

In April, GE Healthcare received the FDA’s okay for the company’s new wide bore computed tomography (CT) system, the 16-slice wide bore CT system. The new technology is available in the LightSpeed RT 16 and LightSpeed Xtra. In the same month, the FDA backed GE Healthcare’s new mammography platform, the Senographe Essential, the next-generation of GE’s Senographe full field digital mammography systems.

Looking ahead at the rest of 2006, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt said that it would maintain its leadership role in molecular imaging and continue to build on its Electronic Medical Record (EMR) segment.