Based on its recent analysis of the radiology informatics market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes GE Healthcare with the 2013 North American Frost & Sullivan Company of the Year Award. GE Healthcare has remained a leader in the U.S. radiology informatics market for more than a decade, both in terms of market revenue and installed base.
Growing competition in the U.S. picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) market, notably from smaller competitors, coupled with the decline in market growth and industry innovation over the past few years, has somewhat pegged back GE Healthcare’s historic momentum in this market.
GE Healthcare is effectively reversing the slowdown with its continued investments in research and development, which resulted in the launch of two new products—Centricity Clinical Archive and Centricity PACS with Universal Viewer solution.
These products constitute advancement to radiology informatics portfolio that builds on GE Healthcare’s vast legacy of technology and clinical innovation, and helps improve efficiencies and productivity in imaging. Centricity Clinical Archive solution1 extends the company’s pioneering efforts in the design of PACS-neutral enterprise image archives to application-neutral architecture for multi-ology consolidation; Centricity PACS with Universal Viewer makes clinical insights within reach to help clinicians streamline diagnosis and help improve result turnaround time.
“GE Healthcare’s vendor-neutral archive effectively allows the delivery of a robust solution for imaging consolidation across enterprises and communities,” said Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Nadim Daher. “Unlike vendor-neutral archives that only support departmental digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) consolidation, Centricity Clinical Archive unifies patient’s images and documents across the care continuum, helping clinicians make more informed decisions with greater efficiency.”
Owing to GE’s unwavering commitment to industry integration and interoperability efforts, such as integrating the healthcare enterprise (IHE) and Health Level Seven (HL7), Centricity Clinical Archive helps providers lower costs and streamline enterprise-level and community-wide collaboration.
Additionally, Centricity PACS with Universal Viewer intuitively brings together 3D post-processing, breast imaging tools, enhanced streaming performance, and patient history on an easy-to-use, unified reading desktop. A choice of Web-based and zero-footprint clients provides enterprise-wide access, allowing users to retrieve patient data from PACS, radiology information system (RIS), electronic medical record (EMR), and healthcare information system (HIS) across a range of platforms. It offers several innovations such as smart reading protocols, which help decrease exam setup time and have the potential to reduce the number of mouse clicks by 70 percent*.
“Frost & Sullivan firmly believes that the ability to meet high-level objectives such as increasing cost-efficiency, enhancing remote access to images, streamlining viewing and workflow, and enhancing enterprise integration, through innovative technology, will be critical to vendor success,” noted Daher.
Overall, GE Healthcare’s upgraded solution set is in perfect alignment with evolving end-user demands and the various directions taken by imaging providers in the U.S. Combining top-quality service, high performance and technology innovation, GE Healthcare’s Centricity imaging solutions have enabled providers to lower costs of ownership while preparing for the challenges of the future.
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in terms of growth strategy and implementation. The award recognizes a high degree of innovation with products and technologies and the resulting leadership in terms of customer value and market penetration.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
