GE HealthCare and AWS Announce Strategic Collaboration to Accelerate Healthcare Transformation With Generative AI

Rhea-AI Summary

GE HealthCare (GEHC) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced a strategic collaboration to develop generative AI applications for healthcare. GE HealthCare has selected AWS as its strategic cloud provider to build and implement new foundation models aimed at transforming healthcare. The collaboration will utilize AWS services like Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q Developer, and Amazon SageMaker to accelerate the development of medical technologies and streamline clinical workflows.

The partnership aims to improve diagnostic accuracy, enhance patient outcomes, and promote equitable care. GE HealthCare plans to leverage AWS's healthcare-specific cloud services and generative AI capabilities to build transformative clinical foundation models and applications, potentially reducing application development cycles from years to months.

Positive

• Strategic collaboration with AWS to develop generative AI applications for healthcare
• Potential to accelerate medical technology innovation and streamline clinical workflows
• Aim to reduce clinical application development cycles from years to months
• Plans to build proprietary generative AI applications for healthcare use cases
• Potential to improve diagnostic accuracy, enhance patient outcomes, and promote equitable care

Negative

• None.

Insights

Tech Expert

GE HealthCare's strategic collaboration with AWS marks a significant leap in healthcare technology innovation. By leveraging AWS's cloud infrastructure and generative AI capabilities, GE HealthCare is positioning itself at the forefront of AI-driven healthcare solutions. This partnership has the potential to revolutionize medical diagnostics and patient care through the development of purpose-built foundation models.

Key points to consider:

• The use of Amazon Bedrock for creating bespoke generative AI applications could significantly accelerate GE HealthCare's innovation cycle, potentially reducing development times from years to months.
• Utilizing Amazon SageMaker to develop specialized foundation models for medical use cases could lead to more efficient and accurate medical imaging applications.
• The integration with AWS HealthLake and AWS HealthImaging suggests a move towards more comprehensive and interoperable healthcare data analysis solutions.

However, it's important to note that while this collaboration promises groundbreaking advancements, the actual implementation and success of these AI-driven solutions in real-world healthcare settings remain to be seen. The 97% of untapped healthcare data mentioned in the article represents a massive opportunity, but also a significant challenge in terms of data processing and integration.

For investors, this partnership could potentially strengthen GE HealthCare's market position in the rapidly growing healthcare AI sector, which could translate to long-term value creation. However, it's important to monitor the progress of this collaboration and its tangible outcomes in the coming months and years.

Medical Research Analyst

This collaboration between GE HealthCare and AWS represents a significant step towards addressing some of the most pressing challenges in healthcare through advanced AI technologies. The development of multi-modal foundation models capable of analyzing unstructured medical data could be a game-changer in improving diagnostic accuracy and clinical workflows.

Several aspects of this partnership are particularly noteworthy:

• The focus on developing AI models that can generalize across various diseases and tasks could lead to more versatile and efficient healthcare solutions.
• The reported 90% accuracy in anatomical structure identification using foundation model technology in ultrasound image segmentation is impressive and suggests potential for broader applications.
• The emphasis on reducing the cognitive burden on physicians and enabling personalized care aligns with the growing need for more efficient and patient-centric healthcare delivery.

However, it's important to approach these developments with cautious optimism. While the potential benefits are significant, the healthcare industry has historically faced challenges in implementing and scaling new technologies effectively. The success of this initiative will largely depend on how well these AI solutions integrate with existing healthcare systems and workflows, as well as their ability to demonstrate clear clinical benefits and cost-effectiveness.

For investors, this collaboration could position GE HealthCare as a leader in AI-driven healthcare solutions. However, it's important to monitor the progress of regulatory approvals, real-world implementation and adoption rates by healthcare providers to gauge the long-term impact on GE HealthCare's market position and financial performance.

Financial Analyst

The strategic collaboration between GE HealthCare and AWS represents a significant move in the healthcare technology sector, with potential long-term financial implications for both companies. For GE HealthCare, this partnership could be a major catalyst for growth and innovation in its digital health offerings.

Key financial considerations:

• Market Opportunity: The healthcare AI market is projected to grow substantially in the coming years. By positioning itself at the forefront of this trend, GE HealthCare could capture a significant share of this expanding market.
• R&D Efficiency: The potential to reduce clinical application development cycles from years to months could lead to significant cost savings and faster time-to-market for new products.
• Revenue Streams: As GE HealthCare develops new AI-powered applications and services, it could create additional revenue streams, potentially shifting its business model towards more recurring, software-based income.
• Competitive Advantage: This collaboration could strengthen GE HealthCare's competitive position against other medical technology companies, potentially leading to increased market share and pricing power.

However, investors should also consider the risks:

• Implementation Challenges: The healthcare industry often faces hurdles in adopting new technologies, which could slow the realization of benefits from this collaboration.
• Regulatory Scrutiny: AI in healthcare is subject to stringent regulatory oversight, which could impact the speed of product development and market entry.
• Investment Costs: While not disclosed, the investment required for this AI initiative is likely substantial and could impact short-term profitability.

Overall, while this collaboration presents significant potential for long-term value creation, investors should closely monitor the execution of this strategy and its impact on GE HealthCare's financial performance in the coming quarters and years.

• GE HealthCare selects AWS as its strategic cloud provider to deliver entirely new, purpose-built foundation models designed to fast-track the development of innovative healthcare applications
• GE HealthCare plans to train and deploy clinical foundation models on AWS’s machine learning and generative AI technologies to help healthcare providers expedite clinical and operational workflows to improve delivery of care

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- GE HealthCare (Nasdaq: GEHC) and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (Nasdaq: AMZN), today announced a strategic collaboration to develop purpose-built foundation models and generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications designed to help clinicians improve medical diagnostics and patient care. GE HealthCare has selected AWS as its strategic cloud provider and plans to use its healthcare and generative AI services to build and implement new, versatile foundation models to transform the future of healthcare. These new generative AI-powered workflows are intended to fast-track the delivery of innovations to streamline healthcare operations, increase diagnostic and screening accuracy, enhance outcomes, lower access hurdles, and promote equitable care, thereby easing provider workload and accelerating industry innovation.

"GE HealthCare has been pioneering medical technology for more than a century. With more than one billion patients around the world touched by our products, we play an important part in improving the quality of care and have a responsibility to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible to enable precision care,” said Peter Arduini, President and CEO, GE HealthCare. “This new collaboration with AWS allows us to build on our legacy of innovation by embracing the power of AI to expedite the creation of medical technologies that we expect will redefine clinical workflows and the delivery of care.”

GE HealthCare intends to utilize Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that provides secure access to the industry's leading foundation models, to create and deploy bespoke generative AI applications, amplifying the advantages of generative AI for their customers. Leveraging Bedrock’s enterprise-grade security and privacy along with a broad selection of industry-leading foundation models, GE HealthCare plans to build and scale its own proprietary generative AI applications for healthcare use cases with an aim to enhance efficiency, care delivery, and the patient experience.

“With AWS, GE HealthCare plans to use the cloud to deliver more personalized, intelligent, and efficient care,” said Matt Garman, CEO of AWS. “GE HealthCare is putting generative AI at the heart of their innovation, accelerated by the investments we have made in healthcare-specific cloud services and generative AI capabilities that provide best-in-class security, data privacy, and access to the latest state-of-the-art foundation models. With AWS as their strategic cloud provider, GE HealthCare can build transformative clinical foundation models and applications for the healthcare industry."

GE HealthCare’s internal developers are planning to use Amazon Q Developer, a generative AI–powered assistant to accelerate software development by generating real-time code suggestions, securely completing tasks, and more. The company also expects to use Amazon Q Business to explore the intersection of multi-modal clinical and operational data with an aim of reducing the cognitive burden on physicians, enabling personalized care, and increasing efficiency. Leveraging AWS's generative AI technology, GE HealthCare expects to reduce clinical application development cycles from years to months and to accelerate the delivery of new healthcare solutions.

"By combining generative AI with our deep expertise, we're igniting a new era in healthcare,” said. Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, Global Chief Science and Technology Officer at GE HealthCare. “Our work with AWS is a big step towards helping clinicians make medical care simpler, more efficient, and deeply personalized. It's about advancing the way we care for people everywhere, one innovative solution at a time.”

Additionally, GE HealthCare plans to modernize its suite of applications with its own foundation models developed on Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service to build, train, and deploy machine learning (ML) models. By developing its own foundation models specialized for medical use cases, GE HealthCare intends to accelerate the development and deployment of web-based medical imaging applications and integrating these foundation models to drive efficiency, interoperability, and improve user experiences across the company’s equipment and software solutions. Customers could use GE HealthCare's generative AI-powered applications, that will integrate with AWS HealthLake and AWS HealthImaging, to quickly and securely analyze various types of patient data, leading to improved clinical efficiency and better patient care.

"We are optimistic about the ways in which generative AI will be able to transform healthcare for the better, and we look forward to seeing the new tools and applications that result from collaborations across industry and health care," said Dr. Keith Dreyer, Chief Data Science Officer, Mass General Brigham and leader of the Mass General Brigham AI business. "As healthcare systems like Mass General Brigham lean into AI to accelerate their work, we see great potential for new foundation models that utilize advanced technologies."

The healthcare sector is responsible for about 30%¹ of the world's data generation, however, 97%² of this data goes largely untapped due to its unstructured nature. This collaboration will focus on the development of multi-modal foundation models designed to analyze a vast array of unstructured medical data (e.g., records, reports, and images) and provide precise, adaptable insights for a multitude of healthcare applications. Unlike traditional ML, these models can be built to interpret data across various diseases and tasks simultaneously.

GE HealthCare has been investing in AI for years. For the third year in a row, GE HealthCare topped a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) list of AI-enabled device authorizations, with 72.³ Its recent foundation model work includes a project focused on an advanced ultrasound image segmentation tool. Utilizing foundation model technology, this research tool has demonstrated great proficiency in isolating and identifying anatomical structures with over 90% accuracy, requiring little human input.⁴ Its key feature is its generalization capability, which can segment anatomical structures, including fetal heads and breast lesions, which were not part of the foundation model’s initial training set. This advanced feature demonstrates the model’s ability to be applied to uses cases beyond what it was originally trained for.

To learn more about GE HealthCare’s digital solutions and healthcare transformation, visit here.

1 RBC: https://www.rbccm.com/en/gib/healthcare/episode/the_healthcare_data_explosion

2 Deloitte 2023. A holistic approach to unlock the value of health data. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/be/Documents/life-sciences-health-care/Health%20Data.pdf

3 FDA: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/software-medical-device-samd/artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-aiml-enabled-medical-devices

4 Technology in development that represents ongoing research and development efforts. These technologies are not products and may never become products. Not for sale. Not cleared or approved by the U.S. FDA or any other global regulator for commercial availability.

About GE HealthCare Technologies Inc.

GE HealthCare is a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and digital solutions innovator, dedicated to providing integrated solutions, services, and data analytics to make hospitals more efficient, clinicians more effective, therapies more precise, and patients healthier and happier. Serving patients and providers for more than 125 years, GE HealthCare is advancing personalized, connected, and compassionate care, while simplifying the patient’s journey across the care pathway. Together our Imaging, Ultrasound and Image Guided Therapies, Patient Care Solutions, and Pharmaceutical Diagnostics businesses help improve patient care from diagnosis, to therapy, to monitoring. We are a $19.6 billion business with approximately 51,000 colleagues working to create a world where healthcare has no limits.

Follow us on LinkedIn, X , Facebook, Instagram, and Insights for the latest news, or visit our website https://www.gehealthcare.com/ for more information.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240725901190/en/

Linh Dinh

GE HealthCare

+1 408 275 5682

Linh.Dinh@gehealthcare.com

Amazon.com, Inc.

Media Hotline

Amazon-pr@amazon.com

www.amazon.com/pr

Source: GE HealthCare Technologies Inc.

FAQ

What is the purpose of GE HealthCare's collaboration with AWS?

GE HealthCare (GEHC) is collaborating with AWS to develop purpose-built foundation models and generative AI applications designed to improve medical diagnostics, streamline clinical workflows, and enhance patient care.

How will GE HealthCare use AWS's services in this collaboration?

GE HealthCare plans to use AWS services such as Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q Developer, and Amazon SageMaker to build and implement new foundation models and generative AI applications for healthcare use cases.

What potential benefits does GE HealthCare expect from this collaboration with AWS?

GE HealthCare aims to accelerate the development of medical technologies, improve diagnostic accuracy, enhance patient outcomes, streamline healthcare operations, and reduce clinical application development cycles from years to months.

How does GE HealthCare plan to address data privacy and security concerns in this AI initiative?

GE HealthCare will leverage Amazon Bedrock's enterprise-grade security and privacy features along with AWS's healthcare-specific cloud services to ensure data protection in their AI applications.