Solving for the Future: Precision, Quality & Accessible Healthcare- GE Healthcare

At the forefront of digital innovation is technology-enabled health care, which is centred around people and builds on preventive, predictive, and personalized health to enable timely and affordable preventive healthcare, precision diagnosis, and treatment to all. Collaboration between organizations is crucial to deliver holistic solutions that address the demands of today’s healthcare landscape.

In an interview, Raghavendra VS, Head – Sales, GE HealthCare South Asia, elaborates on the importance of technology in developing holistic solutions in healthcare. Raghavendra VS leads the commercials for Wipro GE Healthcare and has been here for over two decades.

Could you please give me a perspective on GE HealthCare’s business in India and your role in the organization?

I lead the commercials for Wipro GE Healthcare for South Asia and have been here for nearly two decades. Most of the work we do is in the South Asia markets, including countries such as India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives, and Bhutan. Wipro and GE HealthCare are the long-standing JV in corporate history, and we have been together for nearly 33 years since we had this partnership. This partnership ensued as part of localization, for which we needed a local partner. 

Can you elaborate on the spinoff of GE HealthCare, now a standalone company?

GE HealthCare is a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and digital solutions innovator dedicated to providing integrated solutions, services, and data analytics focusing on precision care, infusing innovation with patient-centric technologies to enable better care. We are committed to providing integrated solutions that make hospitals more efficient, clinicians more effective, therapies more precise, and patients healthier. We continue to focus on solving the problems in the market for our patients and healthcare stakeholders. We are an $18.3 billion business with 50,000 employees working to create a world where healthcare has no limits. Our Imaging, Ultrasound, Patient Care Solutions, and Pharmaceutical Diagnostics businesses help improve patient care from diagnosis to therapy to monitoring. 

What key challenges need to be addressed in the health tech industry? 

With its large geography and rugged terrain, access to healthcare can be challenging in our country. It is crucial to design accessible solutions. Now, another challenge is the physical nature of how you can house this equipment in locations with power, space, and skill constraints.

Our team is focused on helping customers with education and competency-building measures across the healthcare diagnosis and treatment journey. This is the first area you would have to continue evolving. Wipro GE Healthcare Medical Device Manufacturing facility that was launched in 2022 – an initiative to leverage the PLI scheme of the Government of India, is trying to solve some of these problems. 

Wipro GE Healthcare Medical Device Manufacturing is a multi-SBU facility for manufacturing imaging, DCAR, monitoring solutions, and interventional and ultrasound products, which comprise CT machines, cath lab equipment, ultrasound scanners, patient monitoring solutions and ECG machines. The CT machine was assembled entirely using state-of-the-art manufacturing practices across four stages, followed by a testing stage to ensure functionality and image quality, all at the MDM facility. Lean Action workout involving size simulation of the manufacturing line for the CT was conducted to simulate the process flow. The learnings from that were, in turn, used as inputs for the new MDM facility.

Today, we design, develop, and manufacture close to 30+ products out of that initiative which was otherwise impossible. That’s a great example of how we are moving the needle on affordability. 

The second one is available across the length and breadth of the organization and helps us drive the message of what healthcare solutions can do for patients and clinicians. This is another segment that we will continue to work on. The third one is on virtual care, which is at the intersection of technology communication and smarter devices. In the healthcare sector, it’s not as much of a challenge; it’s a great opportunity that MedTech organizations like us should be solving for. 

Can you elaborate more on how you solve these problems through solutions you bring to the market?

Patients today deal with multiple challenges, like finding the right hospital with the proper infrastructure and well-equipped clinicians. We solve problems and better address patient needs from a healthcare technology standpoint through innovative products and solutions. For instance, in our widely used equipment like ECG, there is a training requirement for the clinicians and technicians who are operating the machine so that the analysis is not misinterpreted. We understood this significant gap and designed a product that interprets the ECG by itself and gives a first-hand report to the physician at the point of care. 

We’ve also launched Revolution Aspire – an advanced imaging solution designed and manufactured end-to-end in India, at the newly-launched Wipro GE Medical Devices Manufacturing plant, in line with the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative. 

The CT system is equipped with higher imaging intelligence to improve clinical confidence when diagnosing diseases and anomalies. It is an excellent example of solving what patients need in terms of product and how healthcare delivery in apartment locations improves. Initially, this product was supposed to be a product with a lower cost; however, over the years, we felt that this system could be made much more intelligent and do a lot more than what it is capable of. In India, space is a significant constraint; we may have a large land, but space becomes a huge constraint when the scanners have to be installed in specific locations or geographies. Creating smarter products, driving more output with less input, and being more productive because they can be housed in small spaces and at the same time deliver the needs of their clinician is something that we are working on.

Accessibility, as you mentioned, is a crucial issue. What initiatives and collaborations have you undertaken to scale access to quality care?

We realize that we can’t serve all patients' healthcare needs. Let me explain this with an example. Consider the threatening cancer burden. You don’t have a single MedTech or device that can cover the whole portfolio of all the solutions that oncology requires. Still, at the same time, the potential of technology and imaging is empowering. For instance, we partnered with Elekta, a leader in radiation therapy. The agreement between GE HealthCare and Elekta allows us to offer hospitals in any country oncology solutions that feature both companies’ tools and equipment. This would include GE HealthCare’s radiation oncology solutions — CT, PET simulators, MRI simulators and ultrasound imaging technology — which providers use to pinpoint tumours, noting their size, characteristics, and location in relation to healthy tissue so that Elekta’s radiotherapy treatments can be applied to the right targets in individual patients. These are primarily found in the breast, prostate, lung or brain. The GE HealthCare-Elekta collaboration may also allow healthcare providers to suggest treatments to cancer patients in emerging markets who might not otherwise be able to access them.

We have also partnered with Boston Scientific, a global medical device manufacturer, to provide end-to-end innovative interventional cardiac care solutions in India. With the collaboration, we aim to unlock the potential of interventional cardiology, offer better heart care by building efficiency across the care pathway journey of the patient and deliver precision care.

Seeing tech solutions' importance, we collaborated with Cath Lab Efficiency Manager. This analytical tool analyzes the performance of an interventional lab, providing hospitals with essential data to identify improvement areas. Cath Lab Efficiency Manager provides a near-real-time dashboard that displays inefficiency measures and identifies the factors impacting performance. The tool visualizes where changes can be made to help increase productivity and help improve patient care.

To take our solutions to the last mile, we have also invested in GenWorks, the distribution arm for GE HealthCare, to drive more coverage in tier II & III cities. More than 550 districts are now being covered between GE dealers and GenWorks. Investment in GenWorks is a testimony to our promise of bridging the treatment gap and enhancing care delivery across India. With the broad spectrum of Wipro GE Healthcare products, healthcare providers have a strong opportunity to build a robust portfolio and provide quality healthcare across India. The speed with which you can reach those markets, drive awareness, and make them adopt solutions will be better in terms of enabling people to drive healthcare delivery better.

How do you leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to solve healthcare problems? 

We focus our attention on AI on two to three pillars. You need a platform to build AI solutions to address current and future issues. The second aspect of it is ensuring that more applications are being created without sacrificing quality, allowing AI to become much more comprehensive. All artificial intelligence is created on a platform known as Edison. We are working with startups through the platform to ensure they develop products that can be tested and validated on our Edison platforms.

We have an active program of working with startups. We have completed three cohorts where we invite startups to develop AI tools that can be tested on our platforms with immense computing capabilities and validate their application before they finally get launched. The AI tools we want to bring for healthcare diagnosis are evolved, and there is a lot to do to address the changing needs of patients. 

Today, most of these AI applications and medical equipment has extraordinary management measures from a quality regulatory standpoint. By harnessing data and leveraging artificial intelligence, we can help our customers deliver precision care — an approach to healthcare that puts the patient at the center of their treatment. Everything that we bring in goes to the stringent measures of quality and regulations, and these artificial intelligence applications have been certified by FDA before they are deployed. 

Elaborate on the precision care service provided by GE HealthCare.

Precision care means empowering clinicians with the data and tools they need to make a difference to patients through intelligent technology. The key to the future of medicine and GE HealthCare’s opportunity is to connect patient data across a provider’s digital ecosystem so that clinicians can access it whenever they want and customize diagnoses and treatments for each patient.