“Bringing in” and “Localization”
Interview with Zhu Haizhou, Marketing Manager of Integrated IT Solutions Business at GE Healthcare China
The strategic objective of GE Medical Informatization
Reporter: GE is a famous multinational company with customers from all over the world. Would you please give us a brief introduction of GE Healthcare Group?
Zhu: As a business group of General Electric Company, GE Healthcare has 41,500 employees in more than 100 countries and branches worldwide, providing services to medical care professionals and patients, realizing annual sales of 15 billion dollars. GE Healthcare is devoted to research in life sciences to help medical care professionals improve patients' lives by performing prediction, diagnosis, prevention and treatment at an early stage.
GE Healthcare began its business in China in 1979. Currently, it has offices and service centers established in all the major cities in China. China plays a key role in the growth of GE Healthcare. With its advantage of operation globalization, GE introduces its medical products labeled “Made in China” to international markets, and also brings globally advanced technologies and services to China. China is gradually becoming one of the key global centers for research & development, production and purchase of GE Healthcare products.
Reporter: As digitalization and informatization of the medical care industry becomes more and more developed, what will GE Healthcare Department do to combine traditional GE medical care equipments with informatization, so as to promote the development of the medical industry?
Zhu: GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions (IITS), with its long-term and in-depth understanding of medical users as well as its strong clinical background, uses the most advanced information and management platform to provide digital departments, digital hospitals and regional medical informatization solutions, optimize the clinical and managing processes of hospitals, and provide patients with better medical services. GE Healthcare IITS provides integrated medical information solutions, including PACS, RIS, CVIT, CIS, EMR, HIS, and ASP regional informatization solutions.
GE Healthcare IITS has worked in China’s medical information field (especially in PACS, RIS, CVIT and HIS integration) for eight years, and up to now has achieved integrated localization solutions and experienced localization service systems. GE Healthcare China IITS Team has established strong departments in the industry, including market promotion, product consulting, project implementation, local research & development and after-sales services.
The strategy of GE Healthcare China in 2007 and 2008 is Glocalization (Globalization & Localization), that is, to bring in advanced overseas technologies, products, standards and concepts to China; to actively promote localization, understanding the demands of Chinese users; and to actively cooperate with the local government and industry to promote the popularization and localization of standards.
“Bringing in” and “Localization”
Reporter: What is GE’s opinion on the role of IT technologies in clinical medical care and hospital management? How do you provide patients with better treatment and services?
Zhu: GE is committed to the application of IT technologies and management concepts in the medical field with the aim to improve management measures, working efficiency and decision-making abilities of hospitals; meanwhile, to provide patients with better diagnosis, treatment and medical services. GE is able to provide a whole series of products for medical informatization and professional services, and also for information systems of PACS, RIS, LIS, HIS, electronic medical records, surgery anesthetization, intensive care, and regional medical informatization.
Reporter: As a multinational company, GE has many successful cases and technologies worldwide. During our conversation, you referred to “bringing in” and “localization” many times. Would you please introduce in detail how GE carries out these concepts?
Zhu: The emphasis of our work is to bring in products, technologies, standards and application modes. In the meantime, we root ourselves in China to provide our customers in the country with all that we are capable of. The success of our customers means the success of our company. For example, we have brought in the advanced PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) technology (work process, system reliability, data security, etc.), and advanced three dimensional and cardiovascular clinical diagnosis functions.
We combine the solutions for the problems of China’s medical resources with overseas regional medical informatization proposals, and actively carry out promotions and pilot work, including the regional medical informatization pilot work done in cooperation with the Public Health Bureau of Hainan province, pilot works in Haikou and Sanya, and the “The New Rural Coadjutant Medical Care” project in Hebei province.
We actively cooperate with relevant government departments and industrial organizations to popularize and promote international standards and regulations in the medical industry, such as with DICOM, HL7 and IHE. We also carry out the localization of these standards to satisfy the needs of Chinese customers.
GE’s HIS, CIS and EMR informatization solutions have been successful abroad, but due to the different conditions and management concepts in different countries, HIS, CIS and EMR cannot be completely copied in China. GE has developed CIS and EMR solutions specifically for China according to the needs of Chinese hospitals; GE localizes PACS brought in according to the conditions of the local hospitals. At present, GE has established professional research and development teams in Beijing and Wuxi to strengthen the research and development of localization.
Meanwhile, we also actively carry out cooperation with local partners. We aim to realize an all-win situation between hospitals, GE, and its partners.
Medical Information Standardization Issues
Reporter: China’s medical information standard research is still at an early stage. As an important member of both the Public Health Bureau Electronic Medical Records Commission and the HL7 China Commission, what does GE plan to do in the field of standard development in 2008?
Zhu: The outside environment is very important to informatization construction. It includes issues of standards, legal positions, taxation pricing policies and talents cultivation. Standardization construction directly decides the level and speed of medical informatization development.
The development of medical informatization in China is driven by the demands of hospitals and the innovation of IT technologies. Based on this, priority shall be given to considering practical needs, departmental needs, and personalized need; and comprehensive planning, long-term planning and in-depth data design shall be placed next in line. This has created a lot of “isolated information islands,” where each system only manages one part of the information for the whole medical treatment cycle of the patient. This has caused repeated tests and inspections, treatment not up to standards, and even medical malpractices.
The present standards not only promote the integration of relevant systems, but hopefully also comply with all activities run throughout the medical care cycle, as well as all patient-related clinical data retrievals and integrated applications. Therefore, the interoperability of the information system is becoming the most important part of recent work. Another point of emphasis in the development of medical information standardization is the standards and regulations of regional informatization. There have been many systems in practice abroad, and pilot projects have also started in China.
The development of standardization is relatively fast and consummated abroad. In China, the issues of standardization have been of concern for quite a long time; however, the speed of its development has been fairly slow. Many regions and departments have made promising efforts to promote the development of standardization and localization according to the situation in China. GE Healthcare China has put much effort into bringing in and localizing standards. For examples, GE Healthcare China has joined the HER Promotion Commission and HL7 China Commission, and actively takes part in the IHE Connect-a-thon and participates in the establishment of DICOM China Commission. Besides participating in the aforementioned discussion, popularization and localization of standards, GE also actively attempts to implement standard localization with its solutions and carry out these works onsite.
In 2008, GE will continue to cooperate with the government, industry members and partners to intensify the popularization and practice of standardization so as to promote localization of standards.
Medical care reformation brings both opportunities and challenges to the development of informatization
Reporter: China pays great attention to medical care reformation. The year 2008 will be a crucial time period, when the medical care reformation has been carried out and the whole society will be focusing on it. With the reformation of the medical health system, medical informatization will be open to new opportunities for its development.
Zhu: That’s right. GE Healthcare China pays great attention to China’s medical care reformation policies and trends. The reformation involves the profits of everyone in the society; whether it is the management departments, hospitals or factories, they will all carry out corresponding changes according to the new policies. With the implementation of new medical care policies, the medical management software system will welcome a surge in updates. The medical care reformation not only involves these big hospitals, but also various small to medium sized hospitals, community hospitals and “The New Rural Coadjutant Medical Care.” We believe that informatization will protect and promote the implementation of new policies.
GE will continue to actively participate in the reformation, and we hope that the new policies may be carried out as soon as possible. In time, we will study the new policies and develop fitting solutions.
Finally, I would like to wish China Medical Informatization Career a prosperous future and that all Chinese people be healthy forever!
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