International Growth, New Product Launches and New Fields of Clinicians Using Laptop-Style Ultrasounds Fuel Growth for GE; Company Repeats as World’s Top Compact Ultrasound Provider with 50 Percent Growth, Revenues of $260 Million in 2007
WAUKESHA, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GE Healthcare continues as the global market share leader in the compact ultrasound industry in 2007, as cited in a recent industry report issued by Klein Biomedical Consultants, an internationally recognized source of ultrasound market and trends. GE announced today the company’s global compact ultrasound business grew revenues to $260 million in 2007, growing 50 percent compared to the prior year. This surpasses the 42 percent worldwide industry market growth for compact ultrasound in 2007, as cited in the Klein report.
The company’s compact revenues were $47 million above its nearest competitor, according to the report.
Harvey Klein, president of Klein Biomedical, stated in the report, “GE is expected to continue its worldwide market leadership position through the year 2010 (the end of the report’s forecast period).”
GE is established as the market leader of the worldwide $4 billion ultrasound market, including both larger console-style and compact ultrasound systems. Compact ultrasound has gained strength and contributes to the company’s #1 position in the ultrasound industry.
“We plan to sustain this growth and continue to improve patient care by furthering GE’s unique strategy in compact ultrasound,” said Omar Ishrak, president and CEO of GE Healthcare’s Clinical Systems business unit. “This market expansion will happen as we leverage electronics miniaturization to introduce innovative, new ultrasound systems, tailored to meet the unique needs of different medical practitioners. In this way, we can help clinicians around the world provide better care for their patients.”
GE’s builds its compact strategy on:
Growth factors for GE’s compact ultrasound in 2007 include increases in:
GE’s compact ultrasound product strengths in 2007 included:
“The use of ultrasound in emergency medicine continues to expand dramatically,” said Patrick Hunt, M.D., emergency ultrasound fellowship director at Palmetto Health Richland in Columbia, S.C. “It's becoming the standard of care for evaluating patients with traumatic injuries or internal bleeding, pregnancy related complaints, soft tissue infections, and certain cardiac conditions. There’s no underestimating the value of the technology and how it’s changed the practice of emergency medicine in the last 10 years.”
“Large console systems can be difficult in the emergency department to use because of small exam rooms, and the need to move the ultrasound system quickly from room to room. You’re more likely to take a more mobile, lightweight system. You’re not giving anything up with the LOGIQ e. It’s comparable on every level to many of the bigger console systems. GE is on the cutting edge; the image quality of the machine is really fantastic,” Hunt said.
“The report package, exporting the PDF out to patient records, is critical. The data flow, getting the images off the ultrasound system to export them, needs to be simple. GE was at the forefront of moving the image digitally and simplifying the data flow from the system. They continue to improve the user interface, to make it easier for clinicians new to ultrasound,” Hunt said.
ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE’S ULTRASOUND BUSINESS:
GE Healthcare is the world’s leading provider of ultrasound systems, information technologies and service solutions. Each year, healthcare providers rely on GE’s LOGIQ, Vivid and Voluson ultrasound systems to perform more than 30 million patient exams worldwide. GE applies more than 25 years of experience and a commitment to advancing ultrasound’s role in patient care. GE has developed seven compact systems. The tiered product line strategy offers two products with a variety of prices and capabilities. Each of GE’s compact series “i” products is designed to bring specialized, console-quality imaging performance and portability to traditional applications. GE’s Compact Series “e” products focus on expanding ultrasound’s reach to new clinical areas. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.gehealthcare.com/ultrasound.
ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE:
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.
GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.
