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A new group of GE Healthcare’s high-tech products just reached a key milestone — being certified as ecomagination products within the company. To join GE’s ecomagination portfolio, the technologies must complete tough environmental and operational tests that measurably show performance benefits for customers when compared to baselines such as competitors’ best products; the installed base of products; and regulatory standards. A third-party then verifies the claims. In essence, the healthcare technologies not only do their day-jobs — helping save lives — they simultaneously aid healthcare companies and hospitals in reducing costs and waste while positively impacting the environment. With today’s announcement, GE’s ecomagination portfolio of more than 85 products now includes two new healthcare products and three product categories, including the Centricity Enterprise Electronic Medical Record (EMR) solution.

What’s up doc? By replacing analog film and film processing with digital images, the GE Digital Mammography Platform, pictured above, offers significant advantages including less waste and reduced energy, water, and chemicals use. Replacing an analog mammography system that processes 27,400 films per year with a GE digital mammography system can eliminate the need to store — and ultimately landfill — more than 890 lbs of film annually.

Revolutionizing bulky Magnetic Resonance Imaging systems, known as MRIs, by making them more mobile, lighter, and less costly is in the cross hairs in GE’s labs. The National Institutes of Health just awarded the team at GE Global Research, which is the company’s technology development arm, a grant for nearly $3.3 million to develop smaller magnets for the critical scanners. As Minfeng Xu, an electrical engineer in GE’s Electromagnets and Superconductivity Lab, writes in his blog today: “Imagine a lighter and smaller MRI system in an ambulance that can be dispatched for emergency care. Imagine a slim MRI system, like the one shown in the figure below, installed in your doctor’s office that can be used for a quick scan when you need it. We are working toward it.”

Of the $2.5 million that GE has targeted for earthquake relief in Haiti, $1 million will be used to help the next phase of the response effort — recovery. That stage is already underway with solar-powered water purification units now shipping to the devasted country, along with critically needed medical technologies (such as ultrasound, anesthesia and x-ray) and mobile video units to help search and rescue teams. In addition to the $2.5 million pledge, GE employees have donated $1.5 million to organizations supporting the relief efforts, half of which comes from matching grants from the GE Foundation.

GE’s presence has been growing significantly in Africa in recent years — and part of that has been in the form of medical aid to communities in need. This week, a GE team made up of leaders in GE’s African American Forum traveled to Africa to meet with government officials and business leaders — and to visit healthcare facilities where GE has provided solutions that include healthcare equipment and support with water, energy, communications and infrastructure development.

As we’ve described in a number of recent stories, electronic medical records, or EMRs, are helping transform the way doctors and their clinics operate. The computerized technology allows doctors to make their clinics more efficient, improve the quality of care, and deliver better service to patients, says family physician Dr. Christopher Crow of Village Health Partners in Plano, Texas. ‘We create what’s called a ‘triangle of care,’” he says in the video below. “The computer is actually in the middle and it helps enhance the physician-patient relationship by drawing us in together to look at what’s going on with the patient.” Dr. Crow adds that when it comes to GE’s technology in particular, “I would say the most important competitive advantage that Centricity has is their clinical database. They’ve been doing it for nearly 10 years and they have nine million lives that I get to compare myself against when I use my patients and my records. Only the VA [Veterans Administration] has a larger database.”