Other partners in the initial rollout of the program are the City of Orlando, Florida; Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport; and the University of Illinois. As part of GE’s collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund, the non-profit group is helping GE select sites and explore new ways to share best practices from the treasure hunts more widely across different industries. As Gwen Ruta, EDF vice president for Corporate Partnerships, said: “Trillions of dollars in energy savings are up for grabs in the United States” and the new partnership is “making it possible for cities and towns, hospitals and universities and businesses of all sizes to ferret out the valuable energy treasure buried in their own backyards.”

The new program comes as GE just marked the 5th anniversary of ecomagination by announcing that it is doubling its initial R&D technology investment — which was $5 billion in the initiative’s first years — by investing another $10 billion through 2015. Added Steve Fludder, GE’s vice president of ecomagination: “Extending our Treasure Hunts to external partners and helping them reduce costs and save energy is a logical next step for GE.”

The work at Continuum Health Partners’ Roosevelt Hospital relied on the same type of process GE uses internally. In the hunts, team leaders work with onsite staff to apply technology expertise and process improvement tools to identify, quantify and recommend enhancements to sources of energy waste — including electricity, natural gas, water, wastewater, compressed air and steam. The video below, taken during a GE Healthcare treasure hunt at our plant in Wisconsin last year, shows how the process works.

* Read today’s announcement
* Learn more about ecomagination Treasure Hunts
* Visit the ecomagination website
* Learn more about EDF
* Learn more about Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative and challenges
* Read more ecomagination stories on GE Reports
* Read “How GE’s ‘Treasure Hunts’ Discovered More Than $110M in Energy Savings”
* Read “On the hunt for sunken treasure at GE” on GE Reports
* Read “Hunting for energy treasures in Cincinnati” on GE Reports
* Read “Finding energy savings in unlikely places” on GE Reports

Brazil already accounts for approximately 40 percent of GE’s South American revenue — $7.5 billion in 2009 — and this year marked the 90th anniversary of GE’s presence in the country. It also coincided with GE’s recent announcement that it plans to locate its fifth Global Research Center in the country, joining the ranks of GE’s other labs in China, Germany, India and the U.S. The centers are the technology development hubs for all of GE’s businesses.

The new Healthcare plant will be one of the immediate beneficiaries of the new Global Research Center, as beginning in 2013 the lab will help initiate development of products geared specifically to meet local market needs. It’s part of GE’s “reverse innovation” strategy, currently active in countries such as China and India, in which products are developed in local markets and tailored for local market needs.

Thinking big: The Brazilian healthcare market is currently worth $600 million and the entire Latin America region is worth $2 billion. Both markets are growing at a rate of 8 percent a year. The inauguration press conference is pictured above.

As GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt wrote in a recent op-ed, published in Brasil Econômico: “From regional jets and autos to mobile phones and food and beverage, Brazil has tremendous capacity to become a leading global supplier of inputs, components, and finished goods…. Indeed, right now GE is working with BNDES [The Brazilian Development Bank] on opportunities to enhance Brazil’s competitiveness in manufacturing and services in areas such as wind power and aviation.”

Poised to expand: The plant will manufacture the DF-R x-ray system, one of GE’s healthymagination-certified products. In addition, the facility has manufacturing capabilities for mammography and remanufacturing of a number of diagnostic imaging products. In the future, the plant will expand manufacturing to include Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Monitoring Systems.

Echoing the surge of optimism about Brazil’s growth, The Economist magazine observed earlier this year that “new skyscrapers are going up along Avenida Faria Lima in the business district of São Paulo. Sales of computers and cars are booming, while a glut of passengers has clogged the main airports. Brazil created 962,000 new formal-sector jobs between January and April — the highest figure for these months since records began in 1992. Everything indicates that over the past six months the economy has grown at an annualized pace of over 10 percent. Even allowing for an expected slackening, many analysts forecast that growth in 2010 will be 7 percent — the highest rate since 1986.” The boom has also caught the attention of Chinese investment dollars, with The Washington Post reporting that “in the first half of this year, China’s investment in Brazil topped $20 billion, more than 10 times all of China’s previous investment in the country. That puts China on track to be Brazil’s No. 1 investor for 2010, compared with 29th in 2009.”

Training hub: Another important initiative at the plant planned for 2011 will be the launch of the first training center for GE Healthcare engineers in Brazil and Latin America. This training center will focus on the transfer of knowledge, training of local service employees and the qualification of suppliers in GE’s environmental and work safety standards.

In the video clip below, Claudia Goulart, president and CEO of GE Healthcare for Latin America, talks about the new plant’s focus on local needs in Brazil and the region.

Learn more in these GE Reports stories:
* “Boosting GE’s ‘company to country’ approach in Brazil”
* “Taking a look at GE in Brazil during WEF Latin America”
* “Keeping growth on the fast track: WEF Latin America”
* “Switching smart grids from ‘demo’ to ‘deploy’ at WEF”
* “Brazil’s turbines sweetly hum with sugar-based ethanol”
* “The sugar-land express: Brazil orders 50 locomotives”
* “Brazil’s new Azul airline inks $1B services deal with GE”
* “GE wins $250 million offshore drilling contract in Brazil”
* “Brazil boosts clean gas in the Amazon; wind in the East”

* Read an English version of Jeff Immelt’s op-ed in Brasil Econômico
* Read the announcement about the new plant

Dr. Williams tapped two of hip-hop’s originators, Doug E. Fresh and MC Easy A.D. to help the center establish credibility among kids who eat-and-breathe hip-hop — and to craft beats and rhymes that rise above the standard fare of children’s music. At the Apollo, children were taught a range of eating options, including the difference between healthy foods, or “Go foods” like apples, and unhealthy, or “Whoa foods” like donuts. They were even taught what a calorie is — a measurement of energy — and the consequences of having too much of a necessary thing. As Dr. Williams said: “Music is a powerful messenger, and this is a powerful message.”

Focus on healthy diets continue to gain traction in the U.S. as an estimated 17 percent of children and adolescents ages 2-19 are considered obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Additional research shows that some 80 percent of overweight children become obese adults. Dr. Williams hopes his Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S. program will help curb that trend.

Our sister website, healthymagination.com, recently published the video below, in which Dr. Williams explains the program’s approach and its focus on stroke awareness and prevention. As Carly Hutchinson, 46, director of communications and outreach for the Harlem Health Promotion Center, which provides health services and education in the community, says: “Stroke is at epidemic levels in Harlem… People in their 20’s are already showing early signs of hardening arteries and hyper-tension, [which are] leading factors.”

“When we teach children about these issues and what they can do, we’re also teaching their parents, siblings, and friends,” Dr. Williams says. “Music makes health education fun. And when it’s fun, kids retain information and know how to act.”

* Learn more details about the program on healthymagination.com
* Learn more about Dr. Williams
* Read more healthymagation stories on GE Reports
* Read “IDEO’s Tim Brown on ‘design thinking’ in healthcare” on GE Reports
* Learn more about how GE is helping to bridge the gap in healthcare access
* Listen to a perspective from Dr. Williams on working to overcome healtcare disparity

Another principle that ties design thinking to healthcare is the need to approach problems from a “system level” so that we can all see the way in which the odds of making changes are often stacked against us. For example, Tim cited a study that showed people are three times more likely to be obese if they lived near other obese people. Understanding that it’s not just fast food and bad habits that are at play — but even your neighbors and community — is essential if someone is going to realistically tackle their weight problem.

The focus on design — and humanizing technologies and patient experiences — is one that GE has been pursuing in areas such as innovative product designs that are intended to both improve care and make an emotional connection with patients. It can also be seen in our pilot program to reduce stress in children undergoing imaging scans through the use of “adventure” themes, such as pirate and mermaid stories, in scanning rooms. The transformation of the equipment and the experience, which immerses a child in a story before and during the procedure, is already substantially reducing the need for sedation during the scans.

And as for the urinal decal, Tim — to many laughs from the crowd — cited it as a certainly offbeat but nevertheless crystal clear example of how design can dramatically change behavior. Many European men’s rooms over the years had posted signs urging patrons to help keep them clean in an effort “to reduce the effects of male inaccuracy,” he diplomatically explained. But the results from rushing travelers, particularly in railway stations and airports, were consistently poor. Then an airport in Holland tried putting decals of a small, single, common housefly in urinals, and it “had an incredible effect… and has reduced the mess in restrooms by as much as 80 percent,” he explained, “because by giving the guys something to look at, they aim better.”

Learn more in these GE Reports stories:
* “Mermaids & pirates take the fear out of hospital scans”
* “Prof. Bruce Nussbaum on design, tech & emotion”
* “Dr. Kalkut on feeling spleens, fearful patients & design”
* “Hey, good looking! GE’s medical designs win 5 awards”

* Read about IDEO’s design work in hospitals
* Learn more about IDEO

Click here to learn about “Morsel,” which is a healthymagination smartphone app that offers up daily, achievable goals to help you stay healthier.

Big tech in small places: Click the image to enlarge it. Instead of simply providing a web-based gateway into a standard EMR application, Centricity Advance has been created from the ground up with anywhere/anytime access in mind, resulting in an intuitive interface. The system management features mean that doctors at small practices don’t have to worry about data protection, updates, equipment failures and other typically stressful responsibilities of user-driven IT management.

The technology, called Centricity Advance, will be unveiled this afternoon at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where GE is hosting a forum on the EMR adoption challenges facing many small practices. Newt Gingrich, founder of the Center for Health Transformation, member of GE’s healthymagination advisory board and former Speaker of the House, will deliver the keynote speech before joining the panel discussion. It will be streamed live at 1 pm EDT and will be available for archive viewing at this link: www.visualwebcaster.com/GE-CatalystForChange.

“As our healthcare system moves toward digital medical records, GE Healthcare has introduced a solution that meets the needs of small physician practices everywhere,” said Gingrich. “Their technology is both simple to use and simple to implement — exactly what is needed to create a 21^st century intelligent healthcare system.” Other panelists include Gartner Research Analyst Jeff Woods, Washington, D.C. practitioner and Center for American Progress Fellow Dr. Peter Basch and Dr. Desiree Butter, a sole practitioner at Colonnades Family Medicine in Wexford, Pa., who will also walk attendees through a live demonstration.

Dr. Butter’s practice, which serves about 1,600 patients, was among the first adopters of Centricity Advance. “If you’re low-budget like I am, it makes a big difference,” she says. “I don’t have to have a chart room. And it really cuts down on staff hours — everything doesn’t have to be filed, or pass through the hands of a staff member. A lot of things I can just access myself.”

Dr. Butter carries a tablet PC wherever she goes, which gives her full access to a patient’s chart, prescriptions and billing history at a moment’s notice; invaluable when she receives patient phone calls outside the office. The system allows patients to log on with a secure password and communicate with the doctor, view their lab results, or request prescription refills. “The majority likes to have lab results — actual copies,” Dr. Butter says. “I like them to have their numbers too.”

* Read today’s announcement

Learn more in these GE Reports stories:
* “Helping fix hospitals so they can better fix patients”
* “Paper cuts: Healthcare IT takes center stage”
* “A breakthrough decision support solution for docs”
* “Inside the revolution at Intermountain Healthcare”
* “Intermountain, Mayo & GE unveil clinical data system”
* “2010 Olympics score a first with health IT solution”
* “Forging a ‘triangle of care’ with EMRs in Plano, Texas”
* “GE’s EMRs: Connecting the docs in 10 communities”

For the event, GE also launched its latest healthymagination data visualization — which is part of our ongoing efforts to simplify complex data and make it easier to use for more people. The Measuring Hospital Quality data visualization, below, draws on data from The Joint Commission, which is an independent, not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than 17,000 healthcare organizations and programs in the U.S. It’s our second partnership with designer Lisa Strausfeld, a partner at Pentagram.

How healthy are our hospitals?: Using the data visualization shows that University Hospital of SUNY Upstate Medical University scores above average when it comes to giving heart attack patients a key medicine upon discharge. But the hospital scores below average when it comes to letting patients have antibiotic treatments more than 24 hours after surgery, which is usually not recommended. A drop down menu lets you explore how the hospitals in your state are performing. Click the chart to launch the interactive tool.

“Healthcare systems in the U.S. and around the world cannot be characterized as well oiled machines,” Dineen said. “They are plagued with process inefficiencies and massive variance. These two things, variance in particular, are the fundamental drivers of higher costs and poor quality. I am an industrial guy and when I hear cost problems, quality problems… I get excited. That spells opportunity.”

Spotting trends in the data and acting upon it was a theme underscored by Tim Brown, head of design and innovation consulting firm IDEO. “You can’t improve it without being able to measure it,” he told the audience. Citing simple new ways to use technology, such as wi-fi enabled bathroom scales that send your daily weight to a trend chart on your smart phone, he said weight loss and better health can become infused in daily life.

The need to stop talking about problems and begin using the mountains of actionable data already available, with off-the-shelf tools, was a message hammered home by Asif Ahmad, CIO of Duke University Health System. “There is stuff everybody can do today” to start tackling the problems, he said. Dr. Mark Chassin, President of The Joint Commission, said the goal of his work, and best practices forums such as this event, were to help take the learnings from a small number of hospitals and translate it into usable information for the other 90 percent of hospitals — to break “the barrier of transfering knowledge,” he said.

Room for improvement: In the data visualization, each square represents one of 30 measures in five categories: surgery, pneumonia, heart attack, heart failure, and children’s asthma. Dark green indicates a 100 percent score, light green indicates above average performance, yellow is at average, and red indicates below average for that particular measure. Click on the chart to launch the visualization.

At the forum, John also announced the launch of GE Healthcare Performance Solutions, which will be a new GE Healthcare business that links GE’s leading clinical knowledge base with our operational improvement, IT and change management programs. The goal is to enable new ways of organizing, measuring and managing healthcare delivery. As part of that launch, GE is investing an additional $25 million annually in R&D, as well as adding more than 100 new employees over the next year to develop new clinical solutions.

As Bloomberg News reported in its story on the new business unit, “the GE Healthcare Performance Solutions division may reach $1 billion in annual sales in five years amid the demands of reform in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.” As John told Bloomberg: “When you look at the technologies in our businesses, they go beyond patient care — these serve healthcare systems, not just the doctor, not just the patient or the individuals.”

* Launch the Measuring Hospital Quality data visualization
* Learn more about the philosophy behind data visualization with Ben Fry
* Read more healthymagination stories on GE Reports
* Read coverage in The Financial Times

Learn more in these GE Reports stories:
* “Visualizing health with The Economist Intelligence Unit”
* “Spotting data disconnects with Health of Nations index”
* “GE systems boost cancer center case capacity by 900”
* “Inside the revolution at Intermountain Healthcare”
* “How an affinity for efficiency saved Virtua Health $25M”

Danger signs: GE’s application enables users to easily compare indicators of community health across the United States. For example, the darker colors that appear after selecting “low birthweight” show those parts of the country with the highest percentage. Our online version of the interactive tool will be available on healthymagination.com next week.

As Todd Park, chief technology officer of Health and Human Services, told tech blog O’Reilly Radar in today’s post: “The idea to make our community data as useful to the world as weather data or other types of data is to other parts of American life. The real magic is that HHS put data out there on March 11 and the world responded. Innovators responded — from Google to Microsoft to startups — and have built amazing apps that HHS could never have built itself. That’s built amazing value for citizens.”

Craig Newmark, writing in The Huffington Post today, also echoes the weather theme: “They’re [HHS] inspired by NOAA — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA supplies the bulk of the weather data used in the US — in high quality, usable form, for free and without restriction. Citizens use that data to better inform the public, often creating serious businesses around that. The deal is that HHS might become the ‘NOAA of community health data.’”

HHS is providing the massive amount of data to the public free of charge and without any intellectual property constraint in the hopes that software developers and technology companies will find new ways to use it, which in turn will raise awareness about health performance and help motivate civic leaders and citizens to improve performance.

GE’s interactive tool depicts data at the national, state, and county that looks at factors such as premature death, adult smoking and obesity rates, hospice use, and preventable hospital stays. It also looks at social and economic factors — such as unemployment and single-parent households — and physical environments, such as air pollution-ozone days. It’s the latest collaboration with Ben Fry, who has helped us with other data visualization projects such as our Better Health Survey.

Working without a net: Another example of the data visualization is this look at Texas. By clicking “uninsured adults,” the dark areas show counties in Texas where as much as 46 percent of the population does not have health insurance.

As with all of our other recent data visualization efforts, the new work with the Community Health Data Initiative is part of GE’s ongoing effort to take what can often be intimidating amounts of scientific data and turn it into usable information that makes an impact in people’s lives.

* See GE’s healthymagination data visualizations in one place

Learn more in these GE Reports data visualizations:
* “What if electric cars filled Memorial Day traffic jams?”
* “Visualizing your energy thirst on Earth Day’s 40^th”
* “Visualizing health with The Economist Intelligence Unit”
* “Data visualization: A GOOD look at affording care”
* “Ben Fry at SXSW 2010: Visualizing data challenges”
* “A GOOD look at the ‘Cost of Chronic Diseases’”

Golden age: The Economist Intelligence Unit’s white paper includes an objective analysis of statistical data and information based on interviews in political, academic and industry circles. It discusses the issues and possibilities associated with Japanese government policy and the need for further understanding of the elderly’s requirements and desires. The report also discusses the environment for innovation in Japan with some of the country’s leading innovators.

Japan’s population, which began to decline in 2005, is now expected to decline from 127.5 million in 2009 to below 120 million by 2025 and to 90 million by 2055. At the same time, the country’s 27 million elderly — those aged over 65 — will account for more than one-third (33.7%) of the total population by 2035 and for one out of every 2.5 people by 2055.

During the event’s panel discussions, Yoshihiro Murai, Governor of Miyagi Prefecture (pictured far right), highlighted four challenges directly affecting his municipality: A lack of doctors; a lack of beds at intensive-care senior homes; increased instances of elderly people who live on their own dying in isolation; and, a high attrition rate of healthcare staff. He’s pictured with Yoshiaki Fujimori, President and CEO of GE Japan, and Jeff Immelt, GE’s Chairman and CEO. Jeff highlighted two areas in which Japan could take a global leadership role: Healthcare IT and homecare health solutions.

GE Healthcare Japan President and CEO Akihiko Kumagai said Japan’s work on these tough issues can pave the way for others. By “establishing the organizational frameworks and advanced systems necessary to solve the problems that come with a rapidly ageing society, we will be able to provide other countries with ageing populations with a model for success,” he said.

As The Wall Street Journal noted in its story on the conference, “[GE Chairman and CEO Jeff] Immelt told the audience that Japan has an opportunity to be a leader in creating smaller medical devices to enable treatment of chronic diseases in homes instead of hospitals. This will help to lower overall health-care costs, especially as medical breakthroughs change once-deadly diseases to chronic illnesses…. “Because of the aging population, [Jeff told the audience] this could be the economy that develops the devices and the protocols of how to really do home health care.”

The EIU study shows that Japan’s 28 million elderly (those aged over 65) currently account for less than one-quarter (22.1%) of the total population. However, as you can see in the next chart, that percentage is about to jump. Source: National Census, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

In the study, it’s predicted that the elderly will account for more than one-third (33.7%) of the total population by 2035, and for one out of every 2.5 people by 2055. Source: Population projections for Japan, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR).

As the report notes, “In a global context, Japan’s ageing is notable for its pace. The country took only 24 years to transform from an “ageing society” where the elderly population accounted for 7% of the total population, to an “aged society” where the share has doubled, according to UN definitions.” Source: World population prospects, 2008 Revision, United Nations.

The report observes that “a major plank in [Japan’s] strategy to alleviate pressure on the healthcare system has been a shift in emphasis towards home-based care for the elderly…. The shift towards home-based care, while aimed at containing costs, was also conveniently in line with a growing social desire for a better quality of life ― a trend that has emerged globally, underpinned by increased longevity.” Source: Patient Survey, MHLW.

You can view portions of GE Healthymagination Day 2010 in English in the links below:
* View Part 1
* View Part 2

GE has partnered with The Economist Intelligence Unit twice before in recent weeks. Our “Health of Nations” online tool is a wide-ranging investigation and data index designed is to help assess how countries are positioned to meet the critical healthcare challenges facing them in the years ahead. We also partnered with The EIU to develop the data visualization, “Fit to Perform,” which examines how health affects work performance and vice-versa.

* Download the report on Japan
* Learn more about The Economist Intelligence Unit
* Learn more about healthymagination
* Read “On healthymagination’s 1st year, a closer look at India” on GE Reports
* Read “Innovation engine: Inside healthymagination’s report” on GE Reports
* Read more healthymagination stories on GE Reports

Hey, baby: A technician at our Global Research Center in Bangalore is seen here working with GE’s Lullaby Infant Warmer technology. The giant GE Healthcare lab at the research center in India, which houses all of GE’s Healthcare products, is “not a sales and marketing demo room,” GE’s Ashish Shah, general manager of global technology, tells the journal. “It is an engineering lab for our engineers to work hands-on.”

As John Dineen, president and CEO of GE Healthcare, told Wharton about one of the imaging systems being made in India: “It is about creating new markets. Over time, this product will morph and get more specialized for the unique needs and characteristics of this market. The innovations from here could lead to an entirely new line of products which in turn could create whole new market opportunities for us.”

Despite GE’s long presence in India, Wharton notes that GE wasn’t meeting its potential when it came to the immense size of the country’s market. As V. Raja, president and CEO of GE Healthcare-South Asia, told the journal: “We realized that the biggest impediment was that we were selling what we were making [rather than] making what the customers here needed. It was clear that if we had to grow here we had to shift gears and align our products to the needs of the customers.”

Wharton goes on to cite Vijay Govindarajan, a professor of international business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, who is familiar to GE Reports readers from our stories on Reverse Innovation. VG, as he is known, told the editors: “Historically, innovations have always happened in rich countries. But in the future, innovations will have to take place in countries like India and China, because this is where the bulk of the customers are. The needs are more pressing here and the sheer volumes will justify the investments that will be required for developing the appropriate products.”

GE’s Ashish Shah cited the example of GE Healthcare’s new portable electrocardiograms, which are lightweight and easy to use, but “incorporate the analysis program that is standard in GE’s more high-end ECG devices,” as a way in which innovations are born, but without sacrificing quality, the journal notes. “Other products that GE Healthcare has developed over the last few years for the Indian market,” the editors observe, “include baby warmers and X-ray and ultrasound systems.” As Dr. Devi Shetty, a Bangalore-based cardiac surgeon who is also on the Healthymagination Board of Directors, told the editors, products that come from Reverse Innovation “can definitely change the rules of the game.”

* Read The Wharton School’s full story
* Read more healthymagination stories on GE Reports

Learn more in these GE Reports stories:
“Innovation engine: Inside healthymagination’s report”
“Reverse Innovation hits Harvard’s most influential list”
“Reverse innovation: Building GE’s local growth model”
“Reverse innovation: How GE is disrupting itself”

Innovation, R&D, and game-changing tech. When combined with the right market intelligence, investment horsepower, and willingness to break the rules, they can lead companies to not just weather a recession, but roar out of it. At GE, we’re betting big on the power of breakthrough technologies to do just that — and a living, breathing example of that thinking in action can be seen in our new healthymagination business initiative, which today issued its first annual report.

Beth Comstock

Since launching healthymagination in May 2009, we’ve reached our year-one goals with $700 million in R&D investments, $250 million in capital investments and the launch of 24 new products and technologies. But beyond charting the progress made in such a short time, the report hammers home the idea that innovation isn’t simply about generating more ideas. Rather, technologies must be marshaled toward specific business goals; attack real societal problems; and be wedded to a deep understanding of customer needs.

Because innovators and companies are often stuck in their current successes or current business models, there’s a critical need to generate new thinking. In the military, they call it “rearview mirroring” — which is when plans to fight the next war are made by looking back at the last war. Just as that kind of trap can prove disastrous for a country, it can also cripple a business long-term.

Vital signs: The Annual Report also spotlights the investments GE is making in areas including our own employees’ health; partnerships with companies such as Intel, Mayo Clinic, Eli Lilly and Intermountain Health Care; healthcare IT solutions; new products that meet local needs at affordable price points; and investments to bring better health solutions to remote and underserved communities.

To tackle this challenge head-on in our healthymagination initiative, GE started by looking at our innovation strategy in three ways. First, we wanted to innovate by mining our existing product lines for technologies that meet our healthymagination goals of reducing healthcare costs while simultaneously increasing access for more people and increasing quality. At the same time, we wanted to do what we call “moving into adjacent healthcare spaces” — which is all about freeing ourselves of old thinking and taking the great technology we have today and finding new, related markets or applications. For example, one area we are pursuing is to take our healthcare imaging technologies into digital pathology.

Concurrently, we also stepped on the gas to develop game-changing technologies that will be in demand in the near future. One example can be seen on our launch of Vscan, an ultra-smart, ultra-small, ultrasound. Another example can be seen in what we call “Reverse Innovation,” which is our approach to developing technologies in emerging markets, for emerging markets — and then finding new outlets for these less expensive, often-miniaturized technologies in developed economies. For example, our lightweight, inexpensive Mac 800 electrocardiogram was born from the mobile unit created in India and China for those countries’ rural needs.

We made the decision to develop and fast-track these new products, and the others that are now part of healthymagination, by focusing on the right kind of market intelligence and insights — and by keeping our global research and technology developments tied to our marketing and sales teams. It’s why healthymagination is about bringing better healthcare to more people and at the same time, a core business strategy at GE designed to generate revenue and position us for long-term growth.

Healthymagination is a $6 billion commitment over six years. The commitment is to invest $3 billion in R&D, $2 billion in financing and $1 billion in technology and content, launching at least 100 innovations that lower cost, increase access and improve quality by 15 percent.

* Read the full Healthymagination Annual Report
* Read today’s announcement
* Learn more about Vscan
* Read more healthymagination stories on GE Reports
* Read “Reverse Innovation hits Harvard’s most influential list” on GE Reports
* Read “Reverse innovation: Building GE’s local growth model” on GE Reports