CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 28, 2004--GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), today kicked off its participation in the 2004 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) conference in Chicago with the unveiling of its 2015 Future Technology Pavilion. During the conference, GE will showcase technologies that will enable personalized healthcare in the future, resulting in the earlier detection of disease and treatments tailored to individual patients.

"As the world's leading diagnostic healthcare company we are working to personalize healthcare, in doing so making it safer, more effective and efficient," said Sir William Castell, CEO of GE Healthcare and Vice Chairman of GE. "Over the last 50 years we've seen significant progress in therapy. The next 15 years will deliver fundamental changes in diagnostics that will transform healthcare through greater knowledge of disease and the individual."

GE's Technology Pavilion at RSNA highlights healthcare research and development including the new, targeted diagnostics, as well as information technologies solutions and imaging equipment that will enable physicians to predict, diagnose, inform and treat disease earlier than ever before.

Predict: Armed with a new generation of diagnostics developed by GE Healthcare, researchers will be able to identify 'genetic fingerprints' of specific diseases that predict the course of how those diseases are likely to develop and progress. Gene-based technologies being developed by GE Healthcare also will help physicians understand a patient's individual genetic profile to predict their likelihood of developing certain diseases and enable them to carry out pro-active monitoring and overall healthcare management.

Diagnose: GE Healthcare's advanced diagnostic imaging systems and market-leading contrast agents will produce high resolution structural and functional images of living tissue, enabling physicians to identify disease and its specific location. For example, GE Healthcare is developing novel molecular agents that image the process of angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels. By honing in on this process, GE Healthcare hopes to help physicians more accurately, and less invasively, diagnose and treat a variety of diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and wound healing.

Inform: GE Healthcare's advanced imaging will show in a matter of hours or days - compared to weeks or months today - whether a therapy is working, enabling radiologists and physicians to adjust a patient's treatment immediately if a drug is not working. In addition, GE Healthcare is borrowing technologies from all of its businesses to enhance and modernize reading rooms where radiologists review images. From the cubic mouse, which enables radiologists to view and rotate images without pressing buttons, to hands-free control systems that use voice commands to move images, GE Healthcare is leading the industry in bringing better tools to radiologists.

Treat: GE Healthcare is working to understand disease at the molecular level to ascertain a patient's ability to metabolize specific drugs, enabling physicians to tailor treatment to an individual patient. The growing understanding of disease will yield more targeted, and more effective therapies to rule out ineffective drugs. From side effects to outcomes, each patient's individual response to treatment will be more accurately predicted.

"We are leveraging our knowledge of molecular biology, electrical engineering, nanotechnology and digitization to drive advances in medical diagnostics," said Castell. "These advances will shift today's hospital-centric model of healthcare based on finding and treating disease late, to a more patient-centric model in which we hope to predict and prevent disease."

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies that are shaping a new age of patient care. GE Healthcare's expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, disease research, drug discovery and biopharmaceutical manufacturing solutions is dedicated to detecting disease earlier and tailoring treatment for individual patients. GE Healthcare offers a broad range of services to improve productivity in healthcare and enable healthcare providers to better diagnose, treat and manage patients with conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.

GE Healthcare is a $14 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) that is headquartered in the United Kingdom. Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 42,500 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com

Contacts


GE Healthcare
Graeme Holland, +44-1494-49-8297
+44-7850-54-5932 (mobile)
email: Graeme.Holland@ge.com
or
Connie Higgins, 262-544-3668
414-336-4153 (mobile)
email: Connie.Higgins@ge.com