

UCSF and Sutter Health Ink Tech Innovation Partnerships with GE HealthCare

Partnerships between tech companies and hospitals and health systems have the potential to drive innovation, reduce costs and improve processes. Recent partnerships that the University of California San Francisco’s (UCSF) Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and Sutter Health, respectively, have formed with GE HealthCare underscore this point.
UCSF is creating a new Care Innovation Hub with the tech giant. The joint research program will pair UCSF’s advanced clinical and research teams with GE HealthCare’s technical and engineering expertise to develop solutions that directly impact patient care.
The collaboration will address neurodegenerative disease. The aim is to develop automated imaging methods such as magnetic resonance imaging that quickly can be tailored to individual patient needs to better understand neural activity.
Projects within this focus area concentrate on advancing quantitative imaging for cardiac and musculoskeletal disease and developing methods to enable high-quality remote scanning. The partners also aim to expand understanding of brain functions using advanced imaging. The team will explore the links between white matter injury, vascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and identify ways to predict treatment efficacy for brain health interventions.
UCSF and GE HealthCare also hope to develop quantitative imaging methods to monitor patient response to radiopharmaceutical therapies and create protocols to expand access to these emerging treatments. The team aims to standardize processes for new approaches, such as visualization of alpha-emitting radiopharmaceuticals. Through this work, the team plans to establish quantitative methods to assess how a patient is responding to treatment, and build, evaluate and translate novel diagnostic innovations to patient care.
Meanwhile, California-based Sutter Health has signed a seven-year care alliance partnership with GE HealthCare that aims to increase access to innovative imaging services and create a more seamless and coordinated experience for clinicians and patients across Sutter Health system’s 300 facilities serving more than 3.5 million patients.
The initial key focus area for the partnership is an accelerated technology program across the health system that will focus on advanced AI-powered imaging technology and digital solutions, including PET-CT, SPECT-CT, MRI, CT, X-ray, nuclear medicine and ultrasound. GE HealthCare’s interventional, mammography, diagnostic cardiology, maternal and infant care and anesthesia solutions also will be included in Sutter Health’s ambulatory care centers, helping to address the growing need for care outside the traditional hospital setting.
Sutter Health expects to save $30 million to $40 million per year, which will come from lower costs, standardized equipment and enhanced service, Mark Sevco, Sutter Health's chief operating officer, told Fierce Healthcare.