BWI: Fortis Healthcare and GE Healthcare Innovations Elevate Indian ICUs to Digital Age

Press release from Business Wire India
Source: GE Healthcare
Friday, July 06, 2012 07:32 PM IST (02:02 PM GMT)
Editors: General: Consumer interest, People; Business: Advertising, PR & marketing, Business services, Healthcare, biotechnology & pharmaceutical, Major diversified industrial groups; Technology; Healthcare
--------------------------------------------------
Fortis Healthcare and GE Healthcare Innovations Elevate Indian ICUs to Digital Age


New Delhi, Delhi, India, Friday, July 06, 2012 -- (Business Wire India) -- -- Asia's first eICU facility CritiNext for 24/7 remote monitoring of critically ill patients goes LIVE in Raipur & Dehradun

-- Targets 500 ICU beds in 20 small towns by 2014

Fortis Healthcare and GE Healthcare, today, announced the launch of Asia's first electronic Intensive Care Unit (eICU) facility - CritiNext. The eICU services being offered by CritiNext makes speciality critical care accessible and affordable to critically ill patients in small towns of India. The CritiNext e-ICU is powered by GE's Centricity High Acuity Care Solutions and operationalized by critical care experts from Fortis Healthcare. CritiNext, India's as well as Asia's first eICU is LIVE and operational today, covering 34 ICU beds in two small hospitals based in Raipur and Dehradun.

Commenting on the launch Aditya Vij, CEO, Fortis Healthcare Ltd said, "We are pleased to be the first healthcare institution in India and Asia to offer valuable life-saving eICU services. The brilliance is not in the technology alone, but the fact that we can use the technology to help physicians practice evidence based medicine. In a couple of years, we believe that this will be the accepted standard of care for patients in India and help to save more lives."

The CritiNext eICU enables a remote hospital to provide advanced consultation, care and monitoring to their critically ill in-patients without having to physically transfer them to super-speciality hospitals. Transporting a critically ill patient from one facility to another, especially a distant hospital, can be risky. Patients are at the risk of clinical deterioration that may lead to adverse events including threat to life, due to the stress caused by transportation. However, CritiNext eICU helps provide expert care to the patient at the local hospital helping avoid inter-hospital transfer and risks. ICU care at local hospital allows patient get better support from family as well as help reduce costs by shortening the stay in ICU. CritiNext addresses the shortage of critical care staff in remote areas and enables physicians in remote units to manage ICUs more efficiently. Remote ICU Monitoring Technology combined with expert set of eyes can help reduce medical errors and infection within ICUs leading to reduction in patient mortality by upto 60%.

To view the Video, please click on below mentioned link:

India's first eICU


"We are at work for a healthier India. We innovate solutions that can help break the barrier of healthcare access, cost and quality. CritiNext eICU solution is a perfect example of how we can take scarce, quality expertise and through innovation, extend it for better health of more people. We are proud to be the technology partner for India's first eICU initiative with Fortis Healthcare. Smart collaborations like this can help unlock new ideas that raise the standard of care for better outcomes," said Terri Bresenham, President & CEO, GE Healthcare South Asia.

With GE's Centricity High Acuity Care & Critinext command centre in Delhi, intensivist can monitor real time parameters of critically ill patients from remote ICUs/Hospitals on a 24/7, 365 days basis. The Critinext team can also assist in timely treatment and monitoring of patients in collaboration with local physicians over audio/video capability provided by GE Solution. Smart alerts built into Centricity can flag trends in patient's condition like picking up a spike in a white blood cell count, the start of a low grade fever, and maybe a little bit of a drop in urine output etc. When an Intensivist at Critinext Command centre puts all those together, they are able to conclude if a serious infection is setting in. Using state-of-the-art rules based engine, clinical parameters are tracked and used to generate clinical notifications which can be overseen in a paper based workflow. It helps in providing pro-active care to save the patient's life.

Dr. Amit Varma, Executive Director CritiNext, Fortis Group of Hospitals said, "Each year, an estimated 10% of all hospital admissions require ICU care. The statistics are staggering - just 70,000 well equipped ICU beds against an estimated demand of 400,000 ICU beds to provide critical care for approximately five million ICU cases per year. It is equally alarming to see the non-availability of qualified intensive care specialists. Only 6000 intensivists/Anesthetists are catering to the critical care needs of five million patients! Well-equipped ICUs, qualified intensivists and 24/7 availability are key determinants of successful outcomes. CritiNext is a solution to bridge this huge gap of ICU beds by providing specialist care at the point, where it is needed in a cost effective way. It also provides successful evidence based outcomes helping standardize the critical care for the patients irrespective of where they live."

CritiNext - India's as well as Asia's first eICU is LIVE and operational today, covering 34 ICU beds in two small hospitals based in Raipur and Dehradun. Two more hospitals - one in Punjab and the other in Uttar Pradesh are expected to go live by end of June 2012. As part of a national roll out of this technology, Fortis Healthcare and GE Healthcare aim to deploy the solution connecting a minimum of 500 ICU beds in 20 hospitals by 2014.

"We have seen enormous benefit from eICU services already", said Dr Suryavanshi, Chief Cardiologist, Fortis Hospitals, Raipur, the first centre in India ever to be connected with an eICU. "Over the past 45 days, we have received expert care from Fortis Escorts Hospital, Delhi, 2000 kilometers away from Raipur, virtually and in real time, benefitting over 100 critically ill patients admitted in our hospital."

About Fortis Healthcare Ltd

Fortis Healthcare Limited is a leading, integrated healthcare delivery provider in the Pan Asia-Pacific region. The healthcare verticals of the company span primary healthcare, speciality day care, diagnostics and hospitals, with an asset base in 10 countries, many of which represent the fastest-growing healthcare delivery markets in the world. Currently, the company operates its healthcare delivery network in Australia, Canada, Dubai, Hong Kong, India, Mauritius, New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Vietnam with 75 hospitals, over 12,000 beds, over 600 primary care centres, 191 day care specialty centres, over 210 diagnostic centres and a talent pool of over 23,000 people. Fortis Healthcare is driven by the vision of becoming a global leader in the integrated healthcare delivery space and the larger purpose of saving and enriching lives through clinical excellence.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our "healthymagination" vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employees are 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.

Twitter: @GEHealthIndia

Video Links:

Dr. Ashok Seth, Chairman - Cardiovascular Sciences, Chief of Cardiology, Chairman Cardiology Council, Fortis Group of Hospitals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZrosGLi3BA&feature=youtu.be

Dr. Amit Varma, Director Critical Care Medicine, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJiBhnW9KdM&feature=youtu.be

Dr. Raajiv Singhal, Director Fortis Escorts Heart Institute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn6S8VDj5Z0&feature=youtu.be

References: Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine & our internal estimates

To view the photograph, please click on the link given below:

Sitting is Mr John Dineen, President & CEO, GE Healthcare,Standing : Mr Aditya Vij, CEO, Fortis Healthcare Ltd, seen prominently,Dr Raajiv Singhal, Director, Fortis Heart Institute (center)
For picture(s)/data to illustrate this release click below:

http://www.BusinessWireIndia.com/attachments/DSC_0973.JPG
Sitting is Mr John Dineen, President & CEO, GE Healthcare,Standing : Mr Aditya Vij, CEO, Fortis Healthcare Ltd, seen prominently,Dr Raajiv Singhal, Director, Fortis Heart Institute (center)


CONTACT DETAILS
Manoj V Menon, Communications Leader, GE Healthcare, +91 9845199852, manoj.menon@ge.com
Shweta Sawhney, Genesis Burson Marsteller, +91 9999168913, shweta.sawhney@bm.com
Surbhi Goel, AM, Public Relations, Fortis Escorts Hospital, +91 9810211229, surbhi.goel@fortishealthcare.com

KEYWORDS
CONSUMER, PEOPLE, MARKETING, BUSINESS SERVICES, HEALTHCARE, GROUPS, TECHNOLOGY, HEALTHCARE

If you wish to change your Business Wire India selection please click on this link http://www.businesswireindia.com/media/news.asp and use your personal username and password to login.

Submit your press release at http://www.businesswireindia.com