Inside knowledge: Check-Cap’s capsule may help doctors screen for polyps, the precursors of colorectal cancer.

Check-Cap designed an ingestible capsule that snaps pictures as it travels through the bowels. The device, which employs low energy X-ray-based technology to safely generate high resolution 3D imagery, may help doctors detect colorectal cancer. No cleansing involved. The capsule continuously transmits information to a wrist-worn data receiver. Patients can go play a round of golf or take a walk while the tiny device does its work. At the end of the journey, the capsule leaves the body the “natural” way.

The $250 million healthymagination fund invests in promising healthcare technology companies. It has focused on diagnostics, medical information management technology, and life sciences.

GE Healthcare and Check-Cap will also design and manufacture miniature cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) diagnostic imaging sensors placed inside each Check-Cap capsule. The sensors will give clinicians a full 360-degree view as the capsule moves through the colon. GE Healthcare has many years of experience in developing CZT-based detectors. Similar technologies have been used in the company’s nuclear medicine and bone densitometry systems.

Intrepid traveler: As it moves through the colon, the device transmits data to a wrist-worn receiver. No bowel cleansing required.

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in men and the second in women, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Almost 60 percent of the cases occur in developed regions. Globally, it is the fourth most common cause of death from cancer. About 608,000 deaths from colorectal cancer are estimated worldwide annually, accounting for 8 percent of all cancer deaths. In the United States, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer.

Check-Cap plans to introduce its capsule in the European Union in late 2013, subject to regulatory approval. The company is also in discussions with the U. S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

GE has been tapping the power of collaborative innovation since the days of Thomas Edison. (His Menlo Park had famously no offices or internal walls.) Today, the company is involved in hundreds of external collaborations. GE Global Research alone is participating in 300 research collaborations at any given time.

I can see you now: GE biomedical engineer Zhengyu Pang at work in GE’s Biosciences labs in Upstate New York, where GE’s cancer mapping technology is under development.

The roster of these projects spans a broad set of collaborators and technologies. They range from academic institutions like MIT (medical imaging), to hospitals like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (colon cancer research), automakers such as Nissan and government agencies (EV charging infrastructure) and venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (clean tech).

The partners typically share knowledge and expertise, or they can pool financial resources to back new ideas. For example, scientists at GE’s Global Research Center (GRC) in Niskayuna, New York, are building new molecular imaging tools to investigate the characteristics of tumors, which could lead to better diagnostics in the future. “We have great technologists,” said research leader Fiona Ginty. But Ginty’s GRC team needed to “get a deep understanding of the disease, how cancer spreads and progresses” to advance fast. Her team partnered with Sloan Kettering and tapped the brains of the hospital’s physicians and pathologists. “We have scientists who can speak the same language” as clinicians, but don’t have the hands-on knowledge of patient workflow and diagnostic needs, said Ginty. She said that the collaboration allows GE researchers to gather information faster and “make sure that what we are doing is relevant.”

An example of financial innovation collaboration is GE’s $100 million healthymagination challenge, which sought to identify ideas that advance breast cancer detection and early diagnostics. Phase one of the challenge, which closed last November, attracted thousands of researchers, businesses, students and other innovators and generated over 500 ideas. GE and its venture capital partners also launched a similar project in clean energy.

Not a pretty picture: An image of colon cancer tissue stained for a biomarker linked to poor patient outcome.

“Why?” asked GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt at a recent speech. “Because we’re a big innovator in healthcare and technology and because I know that in my lifetime we can treat major diseases, like cancer, more effectively at lower cost.”

Discussing the barometer’s results, GE’s senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock said that “creating conditions for meaningful innovation requires the right blend of internal and external factors that can readily be adapted to meet individual market and customer needs. Fortunately, this year’s study suggests that companies interested in competing are up for the challenge, ready to adopt and deploy a modern approach to innovation that will deliver both value and meaningful solutions.”

The study also confirmed the findings of GE’s inaugural Barometer from January 2011. That survey found that companies are moving beyond the traditional, closed model of innovation and embracing a new paradigm. This new model fosters collaboration between several partners, values the creative power of smaller organizations and individuals, and tailors solutions to meet local needs.

On the flip side, the survey found that the lingering global economic uncertainty has hampered the ability of companies to innovate by making it harder to raise external funding and access venture capital.

“This year’s study confirms a lot of what we’ve been seeing in the global marketplace, that the uncertainties inherent in today’s economic environment are challenging business’ ability to innovate,” said GE’s senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock. “We see these results, in some ways, as a rallying cry for business leaders to understand where and how their innovation strategies are being challenged and to drive to new models. Innovation is a powerful lever to address the challenges of a growing world. It allows us to use resources more efficiently, produce more with less and deliver better technologies to help markets drive economic growth and better quality of life.”

Last week, Fast Company magazine carried a cover story titled “Generation Flux,” which featured Comstock. In that story Comstock anticipated the Barometer’s findings. She talked about the need for speed and agility in a fast changing world, the importance of accepting chaos and embracing new skills. Innovation is a big part of this. “Business model innovation is constant in this economy,” Comstock said. “You start with a vision of a platform. For a while, you think there’s a line of sight, and then it’s gone. There’s suddenly a new angle,” she said.

The Financial Times pointed to Germany as “the most self-confident large economy in business innovation, according to the survey.” The newspaper quoted GE chief economist Marco Anunziata as saying that “Germany has performed brilliantly when it comes to adding new ideas to products and processes in the kinds of sectors in which it has traditionally excelled.”

The poll picked the U.S. as the country with the best reputation for innovation. The full findings of the innovation barometer are here.

1. Reducing the High Cost of Solar Power: In April, GE announced that its thin film solar panels made from a crystalline compound of the elements cadmium and telluride achieved nearly 13 percent efficiency. Consider that a one percent increase in panel efficiency equals around a 10 percent decrease in system costs. The thin film panels will be manufactured at a new solar panel plant near Denver, Colorado. The factory, the country’s largest, will create 355 jobs and make enough solar panels per year to power 80,000 homes. It is scheduled to open in 2013.

In October, engineers at GE’s Global Research Center reported that they developed a system that aims to cut installation costs by half, from $6.50 per watt to just $3. At that price, the savings provided would more than offset the expense of mounting them on the roof.

2. Integrating Renewable Power into the Grid More Seamlessly: Solar and wind power provide clean, renewable energy. But how do utilities and power grid operators replace lost power when the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing? Enter GE’s new flexible power technology, like the FlexEfficiency 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant. GE invested some $500 million in the R&D effort that led to the FlexEfficiency 50. The system can ramp up power production on a cloudy day in just minutes, twice the rate of today’s energy benchmarks. In November, GE announced that it would build the first FlexEfficiency 50 plant in northern France. It will produce 510 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 600,000 households. The plant is scheduled to come on line in late 2015.

3. Slashing Emissions and Fuel Costs for Jet Engines: The LEAP engine, short for Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion, is manufactured by CFM International, a joint company between GE Aviation and France’s Snecma. The engine can achieve double-digit improvements in fuel burn and emissions, and lower maintenance costs. In 2011, CFM received orders for over 2,830 engines. This brings total LEAP orders to 3,160 engines, valued at $38 billion (U.S. list price).

To explore how the innovative tech of the LEAP engine reduces costs and emissions, check out the infographic.

4. Connecting the World’s Machines: From enormous gas turbines to kitchen microwave ovens, machines are vast repositories of data. Harvesting and analyzing this information and then applying the insights can make the systems run smarter and more efficiently. That’s why in November GE announced that it would hire 400 software engineers and professionals and open a new software center in San Ramon in the Bay Area. They will be developing digital tools that gather and analyze the millions of gigabytes of data generated by controls, sensors, computers and other devices that together make the brains of industrial machines. These software tools will predict and respond to changes, and guide customers in how to best use their assets. GE already has some 5,000 software engineers on staff. GE’s software revenues are about $2.5 billion. The company expects double-digit growth in this segment from now until 2015.

5. Personalizing Medicine: GE has been focusing on technologies to help clinicians better personalize diagnoses and treatments. In short, GE provides tools that help physicians assess a disease in individual patients and pick the treatment that fits each best. For example, in 2010 GE Healthcare acquired Clarient, a California-based molecular diagnostics firm and the manufacturer laboratory tests such as Mammostrat. This test allows doctors assess the likelihood of breast cancer recurrence. “If her cancer does not have an aggressive profile, she may not need additional therapies,” said Gerard Brophy, head of new product development at GE Healthcare Medical Diagnostics.

In September 2011, GE announced that it would invest $1 billion in new cancer solutions and the company has also introduced a $100 million innovation challenge open to anyone to come up with new ideas to fight cancer. “Why?” asked GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt at a recent speech. “Because we’re a big innovator in healthcare and technology and because I know that in my lifetime we can treat major diseases, like cancer, more effectively at lower cost.”

Instead, imagine you could connect all of this information – latest visits to their doctors, results from tests or procedures, and all the data we will one day collect from devices at home – and compare it to the latest research. It would be so much easier to make a difference in each person’s life … you’d know which patient to contact and offer specialized help, and also be able to collaborate with everyone involved in the care of that patient.

Healthcare information technology will one day make this possible, and that is where today’s news fit’s in.

Consistent with our healthymagination strategy, GE and Microsoft today announced plans to start a joint venture that will allow healthcare teams to help improve quality, performance and the patient experience through health information technology.

Combining Microsoft’s deep expertise in building platforms and enterprise ecosystems with GE Healthcare’s complementary experience in clinical and administrative workflow solutions, the global venture will deliver something truly different: the industry’s first Healthcare Performance Management Suite focused on enabling population health management to alter the economics of health and wellness.

The need is real. For example, in the United States alone, wasteful healthcare spending has been calculated at up to US$1.2 trillion of the US$2.2 trillion spent on healthcare in 2008, or more than a half. The New England Journal of Medicine has reported that patients receive recommended care less than 55% of the time. The amount of clinical knowledge doubles every eight years, and it can take 14 years, on average, for new evidence to find its way into common practice.

Combining our innovation, technical skills and deep understanding of the global challenges the healthcare industry is facing, our companies have a shared vision to deliver on the promise of a connected, patient-centric healthcare system.

Perhaps. But rather than just relying on oil revenues, which currently contribute some 85 percent of the state budget, the desert Kingdom is moving to consolidate its oil boon and focus on economic diversification and sustainable growth.

That is a smart way to go. The International Monetary Fund reported that over the past decade, the number of Saudis has grown four times the average rate for advanced economies. Half of the Saudi population is now below the age of 23, adding stress to the labor market and to the country’s welfare system.

The Saudi government recently published its Vision 2020 that maps the road ahead. The document views the country emerging as “a diversified and prosperous economy.” The report stressed that manufacturing, innovation, training and education, and the private sector entrepreneurship were key to sustainable growth.

GE has been active in Saudi Arabia for over 80 years, and the company plays a key role in supporting the Kingdom to make that transition. GE supplied the country with equipment for its first oil refinery in 1942.

Today, more than 500 GE turbines produce over half of Saudi electricity. The company just announced a $300 million contract to supply 13 new gas turbines that will add 800 megawatts to the grid and help deal with summer blackouts. GE’s water treatment technology delivers some 180 million of liters of clean water every day to the parched country.

Mark Hura from GE Digital Energy shows explains an interactive 3D application to Saudi executives.
From left to right: Eng. Ali AlBarrak, CEO of Saudi Electricity Co., Dr. Abdulaziz AlJazzar, CEO of AlMalaz Group, and Dr. Ihsan AbuHulaiqa, CEO Joatha for Business Development And Executive Member Shura Council.

Elsewhere, GE is training some Saudi professionals in the energy, healthcare and aviation sectors. The company is also expanding the country’s R&D base. In June 2011, GE opened a $250 million technology and training center in Dammam. The center focuses on innovation and technology transfer and helps the Kingdom expand its manufacturing and export sectors.

GE has also partnered with the Saudi Ministry of Health to modernize the country’s healthcare. Last year, GE’s Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock traveled to the Kingdom and signed an agreement with the ministry to build a sustainable healthcare model that can provide more access to care, and deliver better quality at lower costs, which are the three tenets of GE’s healthymagination strategy.

Comstock returned Riyadh in October this year to raise awareness of breast cancer screenings and the growing incidence of breast cancer in the Kingdom – currently, the most common form of cancer. In a joint stakeholder event with the health ministry, Comstock and senior officials from the ministry and other key institutions addressed over 200 healthcare practitioners and key opinion leaders about the importance of early diagnosis and screening programs. GE and the ministry also launched a dedicated website for promoting breast cancer awareness

GE’s Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock with Dr. Mohammed Khushaim, the Deputy Minister of Health for Planning and Development, Saudi Arabia, standing in front of a mammography screening device.

Computed Tomography imaging, or CT, has quickly grown into one of the most powerful diagnostic tools. CT’s high-resolution images are being widely used in emergencies to detect trauma and acute injuries, in oncology as a diagnosis and treatment progress tracking tool, and in heart medicine.

But there has been a tradeoff between the outstanding and needed image clarity delivered by CT for accurate diagnosis and low patient exposure to radiation.

GE has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing technology and software that would start chipping away at this tradeoff and produce clearer images at a lower dose. Today, GE’s CT systems are equipped with a variety of advanced technologies and applications that help physicians obtain the right image at the right time and at the right dose.

One area the company has been focusing on is called image reconstruction technologies. These technologies apply advanced computing and sophisticated statistical modeling to raw image data gathered by the scanner.

Data gathered at low radiation levels contain a lot of noise and the images are fuzzy. It’s like listening to a crackling broadcast from a distant radio station. GE’s software works like a series of increasingly finer tuners that filter out the noise and leave the clear message to emerge.

 

 

Compared to FBP, these Veo images illustrate more small order arteries and a sharper depiction of all the arteries. Scan protocol: 100 – 192 mAs, 120 kVp Slice Thickness: 0.625 mm. FBP reconstruction (left), Veo reconstruction (right).

Compared to FBP, this Veo image illustrates a significant reduction in image noise, especially through the bony pelvis. It also shows a better detection and characterization of a right adrenal adenoma. Scan protocol: 75 mAs, 120 kVp Slice Thickness: 0.625 mm. FBP reconstruction (left), Veo reconstruction (right).

Compared to FBP, this Veo image illustrates a sharper depiction of all blood vessels and a demonstration of more small order vessels. FBP reconstruction (left), Veo reconstruction (right).

Compared to FBP, this Veo reconstruction illustrates lower image noise, especially through the shoulders, an improved depiction of small intracranial arteries, and slightly fewer streaks from dental work on the left. Scan protocol: 52-160 mAs, 100 kVp Slice Thickness: 0.625 mm. FBP reconstruction (left), Veo reconstruction (right).

Compared to FBP, these Veo images illustrate more small order arteries and a sharper depiction of all the arteries. Scan protocol: 100 – 192 mAs, 120 kVp Slice Thickness: 0.625 mm. FBP reconstruction (left), Veo reconstruction (right).

Compared to FBP, this Veo image illustrates a significant reduction in image noise, especially through the bony pelvis. It also shows a better detection and characterization of a right adrenal adenoma. Scan protocol: 75 mAs, 120 kVp Slice Thickness: 0.625 mm. FBP reconstruction (left), Veo reconstruction (right).

Compared to FBP, this Veo image illustrates a sharper depiction of all blood vessels and a demonstration of more small order vessels. FBP reconstruction (left), Veo reconstruction (right).

Compared to FBP, this Veo reconstruction illustrates lower image noise, especially through the shoulders, an improved depiction of small intracranial arteries, and slightly fewer streaks from dental work on the left. Scan protocol: 52-160 mAs, 100 kVp Slice Thickness: 0.625 mm. FBP reconstruction (left), Veo reconstruction (right).

 

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In 2008, GE first introduced Adaptive Statistical Reconstruction, or ASiR, which helped radiologists to maintain high image clarity while reducing dose to substantially lower levels*.

GE’s new technology, called Veo, builds on ASiR by adding powerful modeling tools to its data analysis strengths. It takes imaging to a new level, delivering high quality imaging at previously unattainable low dose levels*.

Veo has already been in use in facilities across Europe and Asia for months and is now commercially available in the US. Current Veo users are reporting many CT exams being done at under one millisievert (mSv). According to Dr. William Schuman, Vice Chairman of the Department of Radiology at the University of Washington, such high quality sub-mSv CT exams have “been in many ways seen as CT’s Holy Grail.”

Both Veo and ASiR work in conjunction with GE’s healthymagination-qualified Discovery* CT750HD, the world’s first high-definition CT scanner when it was launched in 2009.

But the low-dose approach goes beyond technology. GE also focuses on additional services, additional training, and additional education programs. GE’s novel dose reporting solution, called DoseWatch, for example, helps physicians analyze patient exposure over time. GE also offers free webinars where expert radiologists educate their peers on the use of low-dose radiation.

* In clinical practice, the use of ASiR or Veo may reduce CT patient dose depending on the clinical task, patient size, anatomical location and clinical practice. A consultation with a radiologist and a physicist should be made to determine the appropriate dose to obtain diagnostic image quality for the particular clinical task.

Vscan hit another landmark this week when the Ministry of Health of the Italian region of Lombardia (Lombardy) became the first governmental entity in Europe to order the device. It purchased 135 Vscans for use by general practitioners. As in many other areas, government orders can drive broader adoption of medical technology and devices.

“Vscan has shown potential to help physicians obtain more information, and promptly send the right patient to the right test,” said Dr. Carlo Lucchina, General Director of Lombardia Ministry of Health. “We are hoping to improve the efficiency of our healthcare system in Lombardia but also validate this new approach and promote to all the other Italian regions and outside in Europe.”

Vscan is a visualization tool that provides black and white anatomic and color-coded blood flow images in real time. It is optimized for clinicians who want to quickly look at the heart, abdominal organs and the bladder. Vscan has the potential to help redefine the routine physical exam by improving a doctor’s ability to make a quick diagnosis.

In critical care situations, Vscan enables an immediate look beyond a patient’s vital signs to help critical care clinicians to identify issues like fluid around the heart. Dr. Liew Houng Bang, director of cardiology at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinabulu, a provincial capital of east Malaysia, says that Vscan “will transform the way we practice.”

This sentiment is one shared by other Vscan users, including Professor Petros Nihoyannopoulos, Professor of Cardiology at the Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospital in the UK.

That’s why two years ago GE established a $50 million program called Developing Health. The program is designed to support non-profit community health centers and improve access to primary care in underserved communities across America. It is administered by GE’s philanthropic arm, the GE Foundation.

(L-R) GE Foundation President and Chairman Bob Corcoran, Jessie Trice Community Health Center Board Chair Paul Roberts, Jessie Trice Community Health Center Chief Medical Officer Deborah George, M.D., Community Health of South Florida CEO Brodes H. Hartley, Jr., Citrus Health Center CEO Mario Jardon, Miami Beach Community Health Center CEO Kathryn Abbate, Helen B. Bentley Community Health Center CEO Caleb A. Davis and Health Choice Network of Florida CEO Kevin Kearns.

Developing Health is currently active in 17 American cities and the program just made its largest donation yet: $3 million to Health Choice Network of Florida to fight chronic diabetes in Miami-Dade County. The grant will establish a healthcare center for 10,000 local patients who suffer from chronic diabetes and its serious complications such as eye problems, heart disease and hypertension. The goal is to provide high quality care that will decrease expensive hospital stays and emergency room visits.

Data analysis will drive the center’s efforts: The center will rely on data to improve its work. It will warehouse and analyze existing electronic medical records, and build real-time, disease specific patient groups to achieve better treatment results.

GE Foundation chose Miami Dade because 11.4% of the county’s residents 18 and older suffer from diabetes. That’s 37% above the national average of 8.3% of diabetics in the total U.S. population. The county also leads the state of Florida with the highest total number of uninsured people, some 600,000, or 30.2% of the population.

To date, the program has distributed $17 million in grants to providers and programs serving over 650,000 people in the U.S. The program follows GE’s Developing Health Globally initiative, which launched in 2004 and invests more than $100 million per year to improve healthcare access in 14 countries across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. It is also aligned with GE’s Healthymagination initiative, whose goals include improved access to quality healthcare, new health technologies and lower costs.

The program, called “WY Women First,” will be launched tomorrow at the Cowboys Against Cancer gala in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Michael Barber, GE’s vice president of Healthymagination, says the company is “seeking to define a new, sustainable model for rural healthcare access that could be replicated in other communities.”

The program is part of GE’s $1 billion drive to accelerate the fight against cancer and one of several global programs to advance breast cancer access. GE’s goal is to accelerate cancer innovation and improve cancer care for 10 million patients around the world by 2020.

GE chose Rock Springs, population 19,000, because the average distance to a mammography screening facility in Wyoming is 70 miles and 33% of the state’s women never get screened. Nationally, 25% of women do not get screened.

GE marshaled social media to reach the scattered population. Researchers found that some 65,000 Wyoming women over 40 are active on Facebook. So GE commissioned a Facebook app that will allow women to “pledge to be screened” and make an appointment with the Mammovan, when the vehicle visits their community. They can also follow the campaign on Twitter. The app will be launched on Saturday, November 5. The van will start touring in February 2012. Barber says that the Mammovan “is like a food truck. It tweets as it goes.” He says that “by using social media, we are trying to create something that’s sustainable.”

WY Women First, which is part of GE’s Healthymagination drive, aims to screen 25,000 women in the first year. If it proves successful, GE will replicate it in other states.

The program also builds on GE’s partnership with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure initiative. The non-profit is donating up to $1 million to help pay for or give free mammograms to low-income or uninsured Wyoming women.

Also part of the program is a partnership with Jawbone, a technology company which developed a digital wristband that monitors users’s movements and sleep patterns and synchs it with a smartphone app.