In one of the world’s most prestigious industrial design competitions — the 2009 International Design Excellence Awards — GE Healthcare has just won five medals. But as GE’s team is the first to say, the beauty of the re-imagined products — ranging from portable ultrasounds to giant MRIs — goes beyond aesthetics. It’s about the critical impact that innovative designs themselves — in addition to the technologies running inside — can have in actually improving patient care and making people healthier.


Visual language: The Mammo NEXT, which is currently in concept form, shows how design is directly impacting patient needs through careful attention to subtle details. As the awards site notes, it’s “designed to minimize the physical and mental discomfort of a mammogram so women will embrace this vital healthcare ritual. The arrangement of the equipment allows the technician and the patient to make eye contact during the exam. Patients, meanwhile, can control the compression of their breast.” Click the image to learn more.

In the audio clip below, Bob Schwartz, who is general manager of global design for GE Healthcare, explains the very real, emotional difference that design can play in what can be an often-intimidating hospital experience.

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The Industrial Designers Society of America, or IDSA, which gives out the awards each year, relied on a jury of 20 world-renowned designers and design thinkers. They spent weeks reviewing the 1,631 entries looking for industrial design excellence in areas such as design innovation; benefit to the user; benefit to society; ecological responsibility; aesthetics and appeal; and usability. In terms of corporations winning big in this year’s competition, GE Healthcare was in good company. Samsung topped the corporate list with eight awards, followed by Apple’s seven, six for Dell and GE’s five.


Dr. McCoy would be proud: The Multix, currently in concept form, reinterprets the humble patient table by turning it into a welcoming, ergonomically sensitive and open environment. The table has a reduced footprint yet maximizes a doctor’s access to information by embedding multiple technologies that doctors may use during a visit. Thanks to miniaturization, the system features a simple architecture that helps relieve patient stress. Click the image to learn more.

The latest trends in design are helping to revolutionize the medical profession — and it’s a core part of GE’s recently launched healthymagination initiative, which is fusing innovative technology with novel design to lower costs, increase access and advance healthcare quality.


Hit the road: The Venue 40 ultrasound system was designed to promote ease of use and mobility. The tablet-sized technology can be easily transported directly into the field of care and provides a far superior image quality to existing marketed products. When connected to a cart and a docking station, it’s also used bedside. Click the image to learn more.

For example, the mammograph is one of the most important tools in diagnosing breast cancer yet women almost universally greet that appointment with dread.

There are so many aspects of mammography that aren’t optimized for the patient that it is hard to know where to begin. But most are tangled up in the nature of the x-ray technology and the difficulty of adapting it to the female form while creating a comfortable, personal experience. The outcome layers pain, anxiety and depersonalization into the process, often causing women to dangerously delay the test.

That’s why GE’s Mammo NEXT, currently in concept, is designed to change the experience and increase patient and doctor interaction. Central to achieving this were the opportunities created by new multi-sources x-ray technology, which allows the miniaturized x-ray tube to fit in a ring concealing the technology and eliminating tube’s motions.

When it comes to GE’s portable ultrasound, the Venue 40, the IDSA notes that it “is comfortable to carry, easy to clean and straightforward to operate, using just four buttons and a stylus for the touch screen.” They note that is readily usable for on-the-spot field care in military and sport medicine — and the flush front is splash-proof, which makes it ideal for outside use.


Gentle giant: The Discovery MR minimizes patient anxiety with a detachable table that can be transported — allowing consultation and patient setup to occur in an unintimidating environment. The design-driven features decrease in-room patient setup time by 70%, giving more time for interaction between the patient and the technologist. Click the image to learn more.

With GE’s Discovery MR, the IDSA notes that it “helps minimize patient anxiety when undergoing an MRI procedure. The table is removable, so patients can be prepped in a separate room away from the imposing device.”


Tight squeeze: LOGIQ/Vivid E9 ultrasound systems, which are used for radiology and cardiology, respectively, set a high standard in ergonomics, environmental impact and efficiency by focusing on improving the ease of use through mobility. The combined system is 20 percent smaller and 100 pounds lighter than other systems, reducing complexity, downtime and cost. Click the image to learn more.

As one of the doctors who uses the Discovery MR at Mount Sinai Medical Center told GE: “There is nothing worse than a period of dead time — when the tech walks outside of the room and enters the data, finds the scan and starts — to make a patient go claustrophobic. That ability to immediately be able to start the scan within the room while you are still with the patient is enormous.”

* Learn about the other winners at IDSA
* See all of the medical design winners
* Learn about healthymagination
* Read about GE’s work with clinics in India
* Read about GE’s donation of neonatal equipment in the U.K.
* Read GE Reports’ coverage of the healthymagination launch
* Read about GE’s Electronic Medical Records technology
* Read GE Reports’ story about our Health Advisory Board
* Read about healthymagination’s work with electronic medical records
* Read about our healthymagination work in Bangladesh
* Learn more about the partnership with Grameen Healthcare Trust
* Learn about our work in Cambodia
* Read our story about GE’s localized healthcare technology breakthroughs going global