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The “Mission Healthier India” is an experiential and educational lounge with 20 low cost GE innovations on board. The Lounge will provide clinicians a hands-on experience on these technologies catering to women, mother & infant care, cardiac diseases and critical care.
With six new experiential vehicles, GE Healthcare hopes to reach 200,000 clinicians around the country, especially smaller towns and villages. The mother and infant care technologies include ultrasound imaging systems for diagnosing health of baby and expectant mother, infant care technologies like Embrace for providing mother’s womb like warmth, Lullaby LED Phototherapy system for treating neonatal jaundice, MAC series of portable, battery operated ECG systems for early detection of cardiac diseases and Critical care tools required for monitoring and supporting critically ill patients, reducing infections in ICUs etc.
“Over 70% of Indians live in smaller towns and rural areas with limited access to quality medical infrastructure, including skilled manpower and technologies. GE is here to create a positive impact on the lives of every individual through its path breaking innovations. We have some of the best people working with us in India who are engaged in developing solutions that make quality and affordable healthcare accessible to all,” said Banmali Agrawala, President of GE India.
GE’s innovation centre in India is the largest for GE in the world with 6,000 engineers and scientists. Over 1,600 of these scientists and engineers are dedicated for healthcare innovations and have developed over 125 innovations for the world with 25 affordable solutions for improving access in India and the emerging countries. GE targets to develop 100 low cost solutions in India to address India’s and world’s healthcare challenges in the area of cancer, cardiac diseases and maternal/infant care.
Terri Bresenham, President & CEO of GE Healthcare South Asia said “Our technologies and solutions created in India for India, have proved to dispel the notion of quality healthcare only comes with a steep price. This initiative is an instrumental platform to reach out to healthcare providers who have taken on the responsibility of elevating the standards of patient care in the smaller cities and villages of India.”
The healthcare vehicle from GE was flagged off by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President of India in the presence of senior leadership from GE comprising Banmali Agrawala, President and CEO, GE South Asia; Tom Gentile, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Systems and Terri Bresenham, President and CEO, GE Healthcare South Asia.
Earlier, a pilot was run by GE touching 3,000 physicians/clinics across 50 small towns in the State of Tamil Nadu. The program not only successfully provided education and experience to a large number of physicians and allied healthcare professionals, it also revealed some stark realities such as low awareness on the availability of affordable technologies; education and training on such technologies; lack of availability and use of technologies, said the press release. This van will attempt at addressing this gap while educating the healthcare professionals.
