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GE Healthcare Finland Oy instrumental in new patient monitoring system

19/11/2009

Following General Electric’s acquisition of Finnish company Instrumentarium in 2003, Finnish engineers have produced many innovations and made a significant contribution to GE’s new flagship monitoring system.

GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company, recently announced the launch of its new flagship patient monitoring system which provides caregivers with a unique level of integration between patient monitoring data and hospital information systems.


A great deal of the work on the new monitoring system has been carried by GE Healthcare Finland Oy, which develops and manufactures patient monitoring and anesthesia systems to the global market. The new product has been under development for five years with 300 engineers working on the project in Finland, United States and India, according to Siv Schalin, CEO of GE Healthcare Finland Oy.

When General Electric acquired the Finnish company Instrumentarium six years ago for EUR 2.1 billion, it was especially attracted by Datex Ohmeda, a high technology unit specialising in patient monitoring  systems, which was then merged with the GE Healthcare unit.  Product development has continued actively in Finland after the acquisition, and there have been tens of patents for innovations every year, according to Pekka Meriläinen, director of research at GE Healthcare Finland Oy.

According to GE, the new monitoring system directly links hospital networks, electronic medical records, diagnostic images, lab results and third-party devices with real-time patient monitoring data, to support efficient clinical decision-making.

In 2008, GE Healthcare’s turnover was USD 17 billion and the parent company GE’s almost USD 183 billion.

 

Sources: Helsingin Sanomat, GE

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