The GE Health Cloud was unveiled  at the 101st annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting in Chicago. Designed exclusively for the healthcare industry, the new cloud ecosystem and its applications will connect radiologists and clinicians to speed, efficiency and collaboration across care pathways and multidisciplinary teams – both inside and outside the hospital setting.

"Our ultimate goal is to help improve patient care and drive superior clinical, financial and operational outcomes alongside healthcare providers," said Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE. "As the digital industrial leader, we are betting big on the GE Health Cloud. By connecting clinicians with the insights needed, when and where they need them, clinicians can take action to improve healthcare outcomes and delivery around the globe."

Today, survey data shows that up to 35 per cent of patient cases are misdiagnosed, partly due to a lack of access to images, data and records. Industry consolidation and cost pressures are squeezing margins and pushing providers beyond hospitals' four walls. The interoperability of systems could save healthcare ecosystems $30 billion per year. The cloud-based apps quickly connect clinicians with imaging, data, analytics, insights – and other clinicians – to increase efficiency, effectiveness and collaboration.

"Healthcare devices are generating enormous amounts of data, and that data is expected to increase 50-fold by 2020," said John Flannery, president and CEO for GE Healthcare. "The GE Health Cloud can help unlock the value of this data, quickly and seamlessly for better patient care. The GE Health Cloud will help clinicians turn data into insights, and insights into tangible actions for decision-makers to drive better outcomes."

The new cloud will connect to more than 500,000 GE imaging machines, shifting image post-processing from on-site machines to the cloud. From the cloud, 3-D images can then be viewed on multiple devices – inside and outside the hospital setting.5 The GE Health Cloud and apps will give clinicians on-demand, flexible computing power that can scale up or down.

By opening its cloud for third party app development, GE intends to attract independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop their apps in the new cloud ecosystem.

The new health cloud follows GE's September Minds + Machines announcement of the company's transformation to becoming the world's leading digital industrial company. There, Immelt pointed to new data that revealed a potential 20 per cent increase in performance through new software and products powered by Predix, GE's cloud platform. The GE Health Cloud is the first industry-specific cloud to be built on the Predix platform.

GE Healthcare announced four new radiology apps at RSNA that will run in the new cloud – all targeted at advanced imaging and clinical collaboration.

"Our new apps will bring incredible computing and mobility power to radiologists and clinicians," said Jan De Witte, president and CEO of GE Healthcare IT. "By enhancing radiologists' speed and confidence through the apps, we can help improve their ability to collaborate with referring clinicians inside and outside the hospital."

The new apps announced include: Centricity Cloud Advanced Visualization –This app will manage image post-processing and allow radiologists and clinicians to view advanced 3-D images anytime, anywhere;  Centricity Multi-Disciplinary Team Virtual Meeting – This app will help multidisciplinary teams do collaborative care planning, ultimately helping radiologists and pathologists reduce the time they spend preparing for meetings by up to 20 per cent; Centricity Case Exchange – This latest edition of Centricity Case Exchange will allow affiliated and non-affiliated systems to share images and reports and quickly confer on patient cases and treatment plans; Centricity Image Access Portal - This app will provide affiliated and non-affiliated physicians with longitudinal patient imaging data, potentially improving turnaround times for patient reports.

The cloud may soon become one of the greatest healthcare innovation enablers of the 21st century. Developers, hospitals, academic institutions and manufacturers will come together to solve for improved patient care across disease areas and care pathways, departments, hospitals and freestanding clinics.

"Building on our long partnership, UPMC and GE Healthcare are collaborating on cloud-based applications that promise to transform the delivery of health care as we know it," said Rasu Shrestha, M.D., M.B.A., chief innovation officer for UPMC. "These innovations will bring measurable changes that benefit patients and physicians."

Apps on the GE Health Cloud will be delivered on a subscription basis, enabling hospitals and health systems to shift computing expense to a variable cost model. The cloud ecosystem will include a robust Software Development Toolkit (SDK), and its app store will host and promote new software solutions. To help ISVs run their cloud businesses more profitably, the cloud will also include a complete billing and subscription management infrastructure.

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services to meet the demand for increased access, enhanced quality and more affordable healthcare around the world.