Yesterday, GE announced its new $6 billion commitment to dramatically expand its healthcare business. At the end of the day, following roundtable discussions and panels hosted by GE at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., the message traveled down the street a few blocks to the International Finance Corporation, or IFC, which is the private sector arm of the World Bank. There, a panel to discuss GE’s new initiative joined IFC’s International Health Conference 2009 — which was already underway and was this year focusing on how emerging markets have seen an unprecedented expansion of the private health sector, buoyed by both consumer demand and favorable government policies.Yesterday, GE announced its new $6 billion commitment to dramatically expand its healthcare business. At the end of the day, following roundtable discussions and panels hosted by GE at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., the message traveled down the street a few blocks to the International Finance Corporation, or IFC, which is the private sector arm of the World Bank. There, a panel to discuss GE’s new initiative joined IFC’s International Health Conference 2009 — which was already underway and was this year focusing on how emerging markets have seen an unprecedented expansion of the private health sector, buoyed by both consumer demand and favorable government policies.
Technology on the move: At a conference in Washington D.C. yesterday, Mary Beth Powers of Save the Children stressed that a key factor in emerging markets — and something that should be top of mind for companies such as GE — is “getting healthcare to communities, especially disenfranchised communities. Maybe it’s bringing technology to them or it’s healthcare outside of the clinics. It might be bringing healthcare to families inside their homes but then trying to link them to, or get them to, hospitals when they need care.” This picture shows GE’s portable EKG machine being used in a rural village outside Bangalore, India.
NBC News’ chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman moderated a discussion that featured John Dineen, head of GE Healthcare; Leslie Mancuso, President & CEO of Jhpiego, an international non-profit health organization affiliated with Johns Hopkins University; Dr. William Bertrand, co-founder of Tulane University’s Payson Center, which focuses on international development; Mary Beth Powers of Save the Children; and Deborah J. Gordis of CARE.
After giving details on healthymagination, John seized on the impact that the measurement side of the initiative can have, saying, “We’ve put a quantitative goal on it — 15 percent,” which refers to bringing down costs by 15 percent and increasing access and quality by 15 percent each. “The healthcare industry has typically just pushed to the next great advancement in technology and we’re looking to break that model…. In some industries, the focus on measuring access and quality is a normal model, like in the transportation industry, where we are asked to make that system higher quality every day. The healthcare industry hasn’t challenged the manufacturing and technology communities enough. We’re looking for a new model from a product development perspective. We want to really screen our products” to get the measurable results.
William Bertrand said the example of cell phones might be a model of how an initiative like GE’s can blossom, as it’s a private sector technology that exploded in developing countries by leap-frogging the need to massively build out telephone land lines. Instead, it put superior technology into the hands of great numbers at a fraction of the expected cost. “Look for technology that jumps over the obstacles,” he said.
Deborah Gordis observed: “If the healthcare system doesn’t work for the user, no matter how good the technology is, it’s not going to work.”
Leslie Mancuso said a key requirement in emerging markets is breaking the mentality of going in as an outsider and “trying to fix things.” She explained: “You have to go in, I believe, with the attitude that there are a number of experts in countries around the world already — Africa, Asia. You need to work with stakeholders at every level in a country — identify what they have; what they need, and work with what you know.” It’s about “taking the science and evidence and bringing it down to the practical level” so that you are working with the system on the ground to “figure out the right technology and identify who is involved, where they are deployed and how both of those things relate… The community in that market must drive it. You want them to own it [system improvements].”
So, what does she mean when she says “system?” It can be something as simple as looking at how clean the water is in a developing country and factoring in solutions to address that even as high-technology solutions are being deployed elsewhere in the country. Says Leslie: “You have to make sure that all the different parts of the healthcare system are working together.”
* Read GE’s detailed announcement about the initiative and an accompanying fact sheet
* Watch an array of videos about our initiative at healthymagination.com
* Read GE Reports’ live blog coverage of the morning roundtable discussion
* Read GE Reports’ story about the launch
