GE, Intel in $250-million home healthcare tie up

04 April 2009

General Electric, a diversified infrastructure and finance company, and chips major Intel Corporation yesterday announced an alliance that will spend $250 million in the next five years to market and develop hi-tech healthcare products.

These technologies will help seniors live independently and patients with chronic conditions manage their care from the comfort of their home or wherever they choose.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension kill more than 1.7 million Americans per year, and are responsible for 7 of every 10 deaths in the US.

With the dramatic increase of people with chronic conditions and an aging population there is a need to extend care from the hospital to the home, GE chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt noted.

GE Healthcare will sell and market the Intel Health Guide, a laptop-sized device with a touch screen into which patients plug digital scales and blood-pressure cuffs so the data can automatically be sent to a nurse monitor. The device includes a video linkup to the nurse station and an alarm that automatically rings if a patient fails to check in at his or her appointed daily time.

 ''This is going to be a big business for us,'' Immelt said. ''What GE and Intel recognise is that more of the care is going to take place in the home.''