All about for our life comfort

The national health care debate right now is all about giving more people affordable access to doctors and hospitals. Yet the vast majority of health care decisions – 80 percent or more, experts say – are really made by individuals, instead of medical professionals, whether choices are about diet and exercise or ways of managing chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

The long-term answer to improving the health of the nation’s population and curbing costs, experts agree, is to help people make smarter decisions day in and day out about their own health. And the most powerful potential tool in the march toward intelligent consumerism in health care may be the Web.

That is why on Tuesday, a startup company led by Adam Bosworth, former head of the Google Health team, plans to become the newest entrant to the online consumer health business.

Already, surveys show that a majority of adults in America routinely scour the Internet for health information. Doctors joke that the standard second opinion of diagnosis and treatment has become a patient’s Google search, with the results printed out and brought to the doctor’s office.

But the Web is still mainly a vast trove of generalized health information. The ideal, health experts say, would be to combine personal data with health information to deliver tailored health plans for individuals. That is what Bosworth and his San Francisco-based company, Keas (pronounced KEE-ahs) Inc., mean to do.

Using the Keas system, for example, a person with Type 2 diabetes might receive reminders, advice on diet and exercise, questions and prompts presented on the Web site or delivered by e-mail or text messages – all personalized for the person’s age, gender, weight and other health conditions.

Although success is far from certain, Keas has some big partners, including Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault.

Health technology experts say Keas is at the forefront of the effort to combine advanced Web and database technologies so it can personalize health education. The promise, they say, is a big step forward for online health tools, and could help accelerate their adoption – much as the spreadsheet program helped kick-start the personal computer industry back in the early 1980s.

"This is the next generation of applications for online health care," said Dr. David C. Kibbe, a health technology expert and senior adviser to the American Academy of Family Physicians, who is also a member of the Keas advisory board.

The Obama administration has drafted its guidelines for producing electronic health records – patient records held by doctors and hospitals – with applications like Keas in mind. To qualify for government subsidies, the electronic records must be able to generate patient education materials that help guide care, and eventually share information with personally controlled health records of the sort offered by Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault.

"The goal is not just health care information, but knowledge about what that means and what action to take," said Dr. John D. Halamka, chief information officer at the Harvard Medical School, and a member of a federal advisory group on electronic health records. "And that is what Keas, and others in different ways, are really starting to think through."

Other initial partners of Keas are impressed with its technology. Healthwise, a nonprofit supplier of online health information, has created 15 care plans for Keas so far, including ones on high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, weight management and stress management.

Healthwise provides health content to major managed-care companies, insurers and Web portals, including Kaiser Permanente, Aetna, WebMD, Revolution Health, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.

But Keas, said Jim Giuffre, president of Healthwise, has a feature that is distinct from other health services online. "They have developed the technology to make decisions from personalized data," Giuffre said. "We think it’s going to help consumers make better health care choices."

Dr. Alan R. Greene, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has two children’s care plans on Keas, for ear infections and asthma, and is working on others. Greene has done projects with WebMD and Yahoo in the past. "But this little startup has an extremely powerful tool, both personalized and interactive," he said.

For medical experts, Keas is currently helping them with technical assistance. But the company intends to keep simplifying the tools so that individual physicians or health experts can build their own care plans.

NEW DELHI: The government has announced a Rs 300-crore initiative to promote domestic manufacture of medical devices such as stents, catheters, heart valves and orthopaedic implants that will lead to lower prices of these critical equipment, making them accessible to millions of patients across the country.

The department of pharmaceuticals is in talks with state governments for developing clusters to manufacture medical devices that will ensure safe, effective and clinically-beneficial medical technologies for the domestic and export markets, said an official in the ministry of chemicals and fertilisers. “We have finalised a project with the Gujarat government. The first cluster in the state is likely to be ready by the end of 2009,” said the official on condition of anonymity.

The Rs 10,000-crore domestic medical devices industry manufactures low-technology products and exports over 70% of its output. So, critical medical devices such as stents, catheters, heart valves and orthopaedic implants have to be imported in huge volumes. The bill for such imports touched Rs 7,500 crore last year.

The government’s drive will lead to development of the medical devices industry in the country, resulting in lower prices of these critical products. The move will benefit millions of patients in the country, as sophisticated equipment is a major cost component of healthcare in private hospitals.

Most patients cannot afford less-invasive procedures such as keyhole surgery due to high cost of imported catheters and other devices that inflate the cost of treatment.

Domestic production of medical devices is expected to significantly bring down their prices, said the official.
The medical devices market is dominated by multinational corporations and their joint ventures, including Hewlett-Packard, Wipro-GE, Toshniwal Brothers and Medi Systems.

GE Healthcare’s life sciences, medical diagnostics business units and X-ray manufacturing plants will be brought under Wipro GE Healthcare, the two companies said on Friday. The companies said the move would help the $17-billion healthcare arm of GE achieve effective management, resource mobilisation and higher growth, using Wipro GE Healthcare’s wide distribution network.

“The move to integrate our healthcare businesses in India will simplify the structure and improve services to the customers. We feel that, going forward, more innovation will be transported from India to the US, particularly in the healthcare space,” said Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s chairman and CEO.

With this integration, Wipro GE Healthcare’s staff strength will more than double to 2,000. Wipro holds 49% and GE 51% in the joint venture. The companies declined to share financial details of the transaction. V Raja, managing director of Wipro GE Healthcare, will head the integrated company.

“We will continue to invest in building and designing new low-cost products for the Indian market. Going forward, we will launch new price points to reach out to the large masses in smaller towns and villages that were not getting adequate health facilities so far,” said Wipro chairman Azim Premji.

The integration of businesses under a single entity will enable GE to get a better foothold in the $3-billion Indian market for medical devices, growing at 12-13% a year. The company plans to launch new products in the local market.

These include products, such as baby warmers and incubators, cardiology products and equipment to diagnose neurological disorders.

Over the next six years, GE plans to spend around $3 billion on healthcare-related R&D with focus on low-cost medical devices and another $2 billion to drive healthcare IT and health in rural and underserved areas. However, the company declined to specify how much of this will be invested in India.

The JV intends to cut down on imports and manufacture more products domestically. “We hope to increase indigenous content in medical products from 15%, at present, to about 50% in the next few years,” Mr Raja said. In terms of value, the company counts ultrasound and MRI machines as its largest-selling products in India.

BANGALORE: Medical technologies and services major GE Healthcare has integrated its business units and manufacturing plants in India with its joint venture Wipro GE Healthcare to drive growth, the company said on Friday.

"The strategic move is aimed at effective management and optimal utilisation of resources to help accelerate growth in regions where demand for healthcare is growing," GE Healthcare chief executive John Dineen said in a statement released here.

The joint venture distributes about 85 percent of the $17-billion GE Healthcare's products and solutions in India.

The business units integrated into the joint venture are GE Healthcare Life Sciences, GE Healthcare Medical Diagnostics and GE Medical Systems India.

The life sciences and diagnostics units distribute their products independently while medical systems unit manufactures X-ray products and some diagnostic imaging products and accessories to the parent firm for exports worldwide.

Post-integration, Wipro GE will be the exclusive entity for GE Healthcare activities in the Indian subcontinent. The new synergies will help the company to design in India and for India products and grow sales faster.

"This is a natural next step for the successful partnership we have had with Wipro in India. Simplifying our company structure will improve service for our customers and has the potential to accelerate the introduction of cost effective, affordable and quality healthcare solutions in South Asia," Dineen said.

Wipro GE chief executive V. Raja will continue to lead the expanded entity, which will include 1,200 employees from GE's three entities in India.

Wipro chairman Azim Premji said the consolidation would strengthen the relationship to provide world-class healthcare in South Asia.

NEW DELHI: US conglomerate GE and India's third largest software company Wipro will integrate healthcare units in India and South Asia. Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt said that the integrated companies would have 1200 employees in India. ( Watch )

"In 5 years 50-75% of GE Healthcare products will be made in India," Immelt added. GE said that the focus is in simplification of healthcare business as healthcare exports were increasing from India.

GE, whose healthcare unit is best known for advanced imaging systems such as CT-scan machines, said in May it planned to invest $3 billion in research and development, with a primary focus on making its products less costly to buy and operate.

GE Healthcare which clocked a revenue of USD half a billion in 2008 is looking at a "double digit growth" this year. GE's rivals in medical imaging include Philips, Siemens AG and Toshiba Corp. GE Healthcare's global unit last year earned $2.85 billion on revenue of $17.39 billion.

General Electric on May announced that it will spend six billion dollars between now and 2015 on innovative healthcare technology -- from portable ultrasound machines to low-cost X-ray equipment.