Tell us about your company’s products and solutions.

As a leading provider of medical imaging, monitoring, biomanufacturing, and cell and gene therapy technologies, GE Healthcare enables precision health in diagnostics, therapeutics, and monitoring through intelligent devices. With over 100 years of experience in the healthcare industry and more than 50,000 employees globally, the company helps improve outcomes more efficiently for patients around the world.Over the last 10 years, GE Healthcare has been one of the largest investors in its businesses in Africa. We have over a thousand employees across Africa. GE has focused on building local talent, localisation at global standards, and finding the best diaspora-based Africans and bringing them back. The investment in localisation with regional teams and working for the region creates an immense commitment and impact from the employees.Innovation in healthcare has never been more intelligent or dynamic. The pandemic has accelerated the path of change – what would previously have taken years to implement is now taking months. And a few examples are:

Command CentreTele-ICU

The Command Center is essentially an AI toolkit to improve outcomes and efficiency in hospital operations. It is used by more than 200 hospitals around the world and the systems are dedicated to the management of critical information, including the availability of hospital beds for COVID patients, availability of staff and equipment inside the hospital, and even directing ambulances to hospitals where there is availability. Tools like these are needed to ensure we can segment hospital capacity and can allow for better treatment of non-COVID patients safely, as well as COVID-19 patients.

Vscan Air

GE Healthcare helps clinicians provide care efficiently anywhere and anytime. Vscan is an innovation clinicians asked for — it’s a wireless, pocket-sized ultrasound scanner enables crystal-clear image quality and whole-body scanning capabilities.

This is used by a wide variety of clinicians who can use them at the point of care to determine if additional imaging is needed, providing support for hospitals managing COVID-19 patients. It also offers premium image quality in a smart, small, and wireless device that puts diagnostic confidence for whole-body scanning in your pocket.

SIGNA Hero

This is a system named in honour of all the healthcare workers that continue caring for our global community amidst today’s COVID-19 pandemic. SIGNA Hero is designed to help those on the frontlines meet today’s most pressing needs[ii]. With better image quality, enhanced workflows, increased productivity, improved patient comfort, and greater sustainability.

SIGNA Hero aims to make challenging exams simpler, turning “difficult” to “routine”. It features a 70 cm bore and detachable table for enhanced patient comfort, can scan multiple organs simultaneously with whole body imaging, and lower helium usage by up to 67 per cent due to Intelligent Magnet Technology.

The magnet is two tonnes lighter and 1.4 times more efficient than compared to conventional designs. Additionally, the system unlocks new clinical workflows for today’s healthcare heroes, leveraging artificial intelligence to improve the clarity of images while increasing operational efficiency.This includes AIR Recon DL, GE Healthcare’s pioneering deep learning image reconstruction technology that works across all anatomies and offers clinicians a 30-50 percent reduction in exam times.

Medic West Africa 2022 event sees a return to the traditional in-person format. What are you looking forward to the most from in-person interactions at this year’s show?

Physical meetings always provide a greater sense of connection which we’ve missed since COVID. Also looking forward to another opportunity to showcase our solutions in person. We’ll have live demo sessions during the congress and give customers an opportunity to gain hands-on experience with our systems.

What are you showcasing at Medic West Africa this year?

We will have the following on display:

• Logiq E10s
• Mac 7
• Mac 2000
• Carestation 650
• B155 Patient Monitor

Medic West Africa has an increasing focus on sustainability. How will you be supporting sustainability efforts at the event?

Countries across the globe are focused on a more sustainable future. Solutions need to be implemented across Africa to improve the quality of our lives, protect our ecosystem, preserve natural resources for future generations, and make our systems work for the long run. Building a sustainable ecosystem in the healthcare sector – will bring growth and development to our economies and communities.

Sustainability is often broken down into three pillars: economic, environmental, and social. These areas of focus have identified goals associated with them, including ending poverty and hunger, advancing inclusive and equitable educational opportunities, promoting renewable energy, increasing accessibility to better healthcare and more.

Questions addressed are: What solutions can be adopted across critical industries that can lead to a more sustainable future for Africa? What has already been done, and what are the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead? How can each industry contribute to a more secure, sustainable tomorrow?

Our purpose at GE Healthcare is to improve lives in moments that matter, and we do so by partnering to help deliver more sustainable and accessible precision healthcare. We are a committed partner around the world and across Africa. Our teams on the ground on the continent are passionate about bringing localized infrastructure solutions that fit the needs of the market.

For Sub-Sahara Africa, this means a focus on a number of key issues – increasing access to healthcare for and beyond non-communicable disease; the establishment of early detection and preventative programs to sustain a healthy population for socio-economic development; and promoting skills development and job creation to support sustainable growth. Tackling challenges from a holistic perspective can allow us to better deliver on our goal of precision healthcare.

Please shed light on your upcoming plans.

Our vision for the future is Precision Health; where we use the latest technologies like AI and Additive, with data from across our portfolio to create insights for better, more targeted, more individualised patient care. When done right, and done at scale, precision health delivers on healthcare’s triple aim: better quality, at lower cost, and provide access for millions more people.

Today, no one questions analytics as a priority — hospitals stood up analytics platforms in record time. We know we need to be able to accurately predict utilisation, shortages, and bottlenecks across all assets — devices, bed capacity, OR, ED, staff — in a rapidly changing environment — in real-time.

We know that by changing the underlying technology infrastructure, we can deploy applications that will make a huge difference in the lives of both clinicians and patients. The utilisation of the hospital setting is likely to continue to be lower than before. Hospitals will treat the sickest of the sick, with others cared for at home, and we will see more use of remote technologies to enable this.

We aim to be the leading partner to providers, therapy innovators and payers and governments around the world across all three areas – precision diagnostics, precision therapeutics and precision monitoring.

Anything else you would like to add?

With precision medicine and AI becoming a reality, the opportunities are endless. We will be able to succeed and leverage them for better health for all through the power of collaboration and partnership.

I feel privileged to be part of such an impactful sector. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped people realise the value of what healthcare can do. I can only say that we must all remember what a critical field we are supporting.