The Top 10 Reasons Transformation is the New Normal for Healthcare – Reason 7

Reason 7: Your next MRI machine may be engineered by the developer of Siri

Years ago Steve Jobs stood on a stage and introduced the world to a device that could make calls, play music and take photos. The iPhone’s software advanced to include features like fingerprint security, an app ecosystem and voice AI personal assistant Siri. Many can no longer imagine life without it.

Today, the brains that built this consumer technology are coming to healthcare – I know, because we’re hiring them.

GE’s head of cloud engineering created Siri and helped grow iTunes and iCloud. One of our CTOs is an expert in mobile and cloud computing from Microsoft. Our general manager of analytics led Salesforce’s entrance into the space. And so on.

They are applying – and advancing – this same machine learning, analytics and cloud computing knowledge to the industrial world in which GE operates.

Take Karley Yoder, as just one example, who worked for a number of start-ups in Silicon Valley and then Apple after graduating with an engineering degree from Duke University. Last year, she joined GE Healthcare and today she is partnering with hospital and healthcare researchers to develop AI and deep learning platforms to improve the accuracy of diagnoses and decrease operational inefficiencies. 

Karley Yoder, a GE Healthcare data and analytics expert, at work on deep learning solutions for healthcare. 

These developers, data scientists and software engineers could go anywhere, they could do anything. And yet they flock to healthcare – an age-old industry. Why?

They want to be where the transformation is happening, where innovation means not just conveniences but potentially life-saving cures.

They’re coming to write code for artificial intelligence and deep learning platforms with academic powerhouses like UCSF and Boston Children’s Hospital that will help analyze x-rays and brain scans to identify disease.

They’re joining a 124-year old start-up to create software like DenialsIQ, launched just last year, that has already uncovered $2 billion worth of actionable claims denials – $2 billion that can be returned to health systems.

They’re building a secure, completely cloud-connected ecosystem that connects population health, patient engagement and financial management.

One point that has come up a lot: in healthcare, digital is about more than the next big thing. It’s a calling to use data and analytics to make machines, systems, processes and procedures work better and faster for doctors, healthcare administrators, nurses and, most of all, patients.

Software will be an ever growing aspect of GE Healthcare, where “digital” is infused into every product we develop and every move we make.

It’s why we just announced that we’re opening a digital location in Chicago that brings together software engineers, software developers, data scientists, product analysts and project managers from across GE Healthcare to work together in the Midwest’s Silicon Valley.

So the next time you see an MRI machine – or ultrasound, or monitoring equipment, or x-ray – it may have been coded with the same brainpower that went into building the device on which you’re reading this article.

Healthcare today is where the consumer tech industry was when the iPhone was held up on that stage. The change will be fast and massive.

And for us, in this industry that touches people and patients every day, there are quite literally people who can’t live without it.

That’s reason 7.