MANAMA, 26 April 2005 — Information is a curious thing. Information received in the right place, at the right time, by the right person can be invaluable. But that same information received in a different setting, at a different time, by another person will be worthless.

Just imagine that on some summer’s evening, you have a heart attack. An ambulance takes you to a nearby hospital and the medical team there hooks you up to a variety of monitors to provide information on your physical situation. The doctor on call examines you but he’s not a specialist in cardiology and certain elements of your condition worry him. He wants a second opinion from a cardiologist but when he telephones that physician, he learns that the doctor is at a beach barbecue located an hour away from the hospital.

Time is short. Your condition is serious. To help you, the cardiologist needs detailed facts about the state of your health immediately. By the time he reaches the hospital it might be too late. If you’re dead, information about the malfunctioning of your heart will be worthless.

The cardiologist decides to turn to some technical wizardry. He dials a number on his mobile phone and accesses a secure connection at the hospital. Through that connection he views your vital signs on the screen of his mobile handset as they appear on the monitor at your bedside. The cardiologist can also see the waveforms and graphical data that show how your heart has been functioning since you were hooked up to the monitoring and diagnostic equipment in the emergency room. After reviewing your condition, the cardiologist advises the medical team at the hospital how to proceed.

Sounds like something wonderful that hopefully will be coming our way in the future, doesn’t it? Well, the truth is that the future is already here. GE Healthcare’s Datex-Ohmeda Cellular Viewer provides access to patient information while health professionals are on the move. On Sunday in Manama, GE Healthcare specialists demonstrated such new technologies as the Cellular Viewer at an event for several hundred local health care providers.

Much of the technology was simply amazing. Even more incredible was the fact that these are technologies designed for daily use in primary care clinics and hospitals everywhere. Most of us are familiar with ultrasound technology. This is the technology that enables couples to follow the health of their baby while it is still in the mother’s womb. To have an ultrasound screening, women have to go to a special department in a clinic or hospital where the ultrasound machine is located. There’s usually a lengthy wait and a significant fee as well.

Now, GE is talking about the concept of “ultrasound without boundaries.” Their goal is that ultrasound will become a mass diagnostic tool. The low cost and small size of their new ultrasound equipment will allow physicians in all settings to take a convenient “inner look” to improve diagnosis and follow-up patient care. These new small ultrasound machines look similar to notebook computers and even have familiar functionality. Since the images produced by the machines are digital they can be saved and shared just like any digital data.

In that vein, at their Bahrain presentation, GE was showing off their Vivid i. The Vivid i is the world’s first miniaturized cardiovascular ultrasound system to provide high-performance, full-featured imaging in a lightweight design. GE’s engineers developed Vivid i by miniaturizing the components of a premium echocardiography system weighing more than 180 kg, to provide a portable system weighing less than 5 kg. Within GE Healthcare, Vivid i is considered an “Imagination Breakthrough” product — a major new invention with significant clinical and productivity value for clinicians and patients. The Vivid i system makes it possible for patients to receive diagnostic exams anywhere, including their bedside, as opposed to being transported to an imaging lab in a hospital.

At Sunday’s advanced technologies seminar, Omar Ishrak, president & CEO, Clinical Systems at GE Healthcare, made it clear that the company is committed to continuing its efforts to help raise the standards of healthcare in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. Ishrak had flown in from the US to personally hear the concerns of Saudi healthcare providers and administrators invited to the event and to acknowledge that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf hold tremendous potential for GE.

GE has been active in the Middle East since the 1930s and for more than 25 years, together with strategic partner El Seif Development, has been making the latest innovations available to healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia, GE Healthcare’s largest customer in the region. The company has long had a serious commitment to after sales service. According to Ali T. Saleh, GE Healthcare’s zone service manager, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, GE Healthcare has invested millions in three strategic country service support centers in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. This has led to a dramatic increase in the speed of customer response. GE has also expanded its local service and technical support team which now boasts more than 150 skilled professionals.

“We have $3.5 million in spare parts in the Kingdom, although 65 percent of equipment and technology problems can be fixed without a part,” Saleh said. “We are using the latest technologies such as call centers and remote support to provide the most efficient fix for any customer service issue. Service is beyond emotions. We log, track and analyze every service request. Our system of service delivery metrics clearly reveals performance. We also use our local intelligence and experience in dealing with service requests. Yes, we can send a technician to a hospital in Buraidah to reset a system, but it will take him hours to get there. However, if we simply tell the customer over the telephone how to reset the system, that system can be up and running again in minutes. Our customers value our ability to respond suitably to their needs.”

Fahad E. Agha, VP, El Seif Development, agreed with Saleh’s assessment of customers’ service requirements. He also commented that the healthcare market in Saudi Arabia is growing quickly and only those companies making significant investments will be able to continue to service their customers well.

“There is a huge expansion in healthcare facilities, providers and patients in Saudi Arabia,” Agha said. “While private hospitals are creating some demand, the Ministry of Health is planning new hospitals and primary health clinics all over the country. Over 10,000 new in-patient beds are already planned. This is driving the healthcare sector. With investment from GE Healthcare we have been able to expand our service offerings to meet our customers’ demands of continuing to provide advanced clinical systems and healthcare technologies.”

Faisal El Seif, president and CEO of El Seif Development, added, “We are committed to providing key breakthrough technologies and customized services to our customers to potentially reduce the time needed for diagnosis of an illness and ultimately enable more rapid treatment for patients.”

Ishrak picked up the thread of the conversation saying, “With the increasing demands on health care systems worldwide, GE is focusing its efforts on personalized healthcare, helping to enable medical practitioners to detect diseases earlier and diagnose and treat them more precisely.”

In Saudi Arabia Ishrak explained that GE Healthcare had been functioning in a “fairly fragmented” manner. Now, that has changed and the company is approaching the market in a cohesive, unified fashion in order to serve customers “in the right way.” He agreed that in the past local consumers might not have known GE for its healthcare offerings but he believed that the company’s brand image was strengthening in this sector.

“If you go into a hospital or you have any form of illness and you go into a primary care clinic, the chances are some GE equipment will be used to examine you,” he said. “That is true from the very beginning where a GE blood pressure cuff or electrocardiogram machine might be used, all the way up to anesthesia equipment in an operating room or a very sophisticated CT or MRI machine to do diagnostic imaging. Along the entire chain of the diagnosis, treatment and care of patients, people will encounter GE equipment.”

Ishrak was keen to emphasize that while the company is interested to enhance regional healthcare, this doesn’t mean that simply delivering technology is the primary goal. GE has a target of personalizing healthcare and that requires using technology appropriately.

“We are trying to focus our efforts on a long-term vision that will try to provide healthcare which is customized by individual,” he said. “So depending on how individuals are ill and how they react to medicine, we expect to provide equipment and facilities through which in a very customized fashion people can get better. That’s a vision right now. But that’s the way we are aiming our efforts. Part of that vision involves looking at people earlier. So, if you want to treat people when they are ill, you want to know what they are susceptible to. For that you need to screen and so over time we expect for health care professionals to use our equipment to look at patients before they are patients. All the way from prevention to treatment we expect to have equipment and therefore make a difference. In the long term we hope that prevention will become the major portion of our business, because that’s where it should be.”

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