Medical device giant GE Healthcare (NYSE:GE) announced that it will pour $2 billion into a 5-year software development program to improve its healthcare systems and applications.
GE Healthcare, the largest software developer within GE, plans to work closely with several of the company’s other R&D divisions around the world in order to develop new software solutions.
"This investment is designed to advance current and future offerings in order to address new and pressing operational and productivity challenges faced by healthcare organizations around the world," the company reported. "Specifically, this $2 billion investment will be focused on maximizing asset performance; improving hospital operations management; improving clinical effectiveness; and optimizing care across entire populations."
GE Healthcare aims to provide care to more patients while reducing costs and minimizing redundancies by eliminating waste, maximizing reimbursement rates, making patient information more accessible and speeding data entry, among other things.
GE isn’t the only company hoping to turn healthcare data into cost-savings. Earlier this year a quartet of healthcare giants (including UnitedHealth, the largest single health insurer in the U.S.) joined forces to form the SharedClarity project, aiming to leverage their combined Big Data to get the best devices for the best prices.
