GE Healthcare and Seoul National University Bundang Hospital have signed a memorandum of understanding to support Korean medical startups by leveraging the latest Edison Digital Health platform.

This partnership will see the first deployment of GE Healthcare's Edison platform in South Korea, according to a press statement. The companies will also provide advice and coaching support for startups to enter global markets, a news report noted.

Edison is an application hosting and data aggregation platform with an integrated AI engine. It offers a range of healthcare-specific services that enable rapid design, development, and deployment of applications and algorithms.

WHY IT MATTERS

Both companies intend to support and accelerate the development and deployment of clinical and operation applications by Korean startups. SNUBH will also install the Edison platform to expand its AI offerings. 

"Our intended collaboration with GE Healthcare will help us accelerate digitalisation in patient care and contribute to improvements in South Korea’s public health by boosting disruptive start-ups that deliver the best solutions for quality and affordable healthcare to customers faster," said President and CEO Nam Jong Paik.

Elie Chaillot, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Intercontinental, noted that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital healthcare transformation. He said an open innovation to crowdsource ideas and co-create solutions is the "secret recipe" of this transformation. "Collaborations with local players are key to customising and improving healthcare access, care delivery and patient outcomes," he added.

THE LARGER TREND

GE Healthcare recently introduced its Edison platform at HIMSS 2022 without giving a detailed timeline of its release. In explaining the technology, the company said Edison has been developed to enable healthcare systems to effectively deploy clinical, workflow, analytics and AI tools which supports the improvement of care delivery, the promotion of high-efficiency operations, and the increase of revenue growth, while also reducing the burden of apps installation and integration across an enterprise.

According to technology consultancy firm Gartner, the digital health platform shift will be the most cost-effective and technically efficient way for health ecosystems to scale new digital capabilities, replacing megasuite EHR systems.

In other news, GE Healthcare teamed up with Hakki Muammer Karakas, coordinator for the Istanbul Provincial Health Directorate Radiology Services and an opinion leader in healthcare digitalisation in Turkey, to develop AI tools for diagnosing COVID-19 and breast cancer using GE Healthcare's Edison Health Services.