Healthcare Industry News:   Biosense Webster 

Devices Cardiology

 News Release - May 15, 2008

GE Healthcare Expanding Alliance with Biosense Webster to Develop Interventional Ultrasound Imaging for Electrophysiology

Global Electrophysiology Leaders to Bring Enhanced Imaging Technology to EP Market

SAN FRANCISCO--(HSMN NewsFeed)--Building on the same relationship that successfully integrated GE Healthcare’s CardioLab® IT Recording System and Biosense Webster’s Carto® Mapping System, GE Healthcare has announced it is expanding its strategic alliance with Biosense Webster, Inc. to develop real-time ultrasound imaging for use in electrophysiology procedures. The announcement came at today’s opening of the annual Heart Rhythm Society meeting, in San Francisco.

Electrophysiology focuses on treating abnormal heart rhythms that, according to the American Heart Association, account for 20% of heart disease deaths. Ablation, in which an electrophysiologist eliminates the tissues of the heart contributing to a disturbance, has a high success rate (84 to 87 percent1) but, because of the complexity and length of the procedure, it is performed somewhat infrequently. Mark Langer, General Manager of GE Healthcare Interventional Cardiovascular Ultrasound business, believes better visualization technologies can change that.

“This new step in our alliance is a natural extension of our long-standing technology partnership with Biosense Webster,” said Langer. “In this new development, we are integrating GE’s capabilities in high performance ultrasound imaging with the leading EP catheter technologies from Biosense Webster. Together, we will create new imaging solutions for intracardiac therapies, augmenting current technologies with new real-time visualization of the cardiac anatomy and therapy catheters.”

In the field of ultrasound imaging, GE Healthcare is recognized for developing many innovations including 4D imaging and an extensive offering of quantitative tools for cardiac assessment. GE Healthcare’s Vivid™ series of cardiac ultrasound systems covers a wide range of clinical needs and applications from console to laptop portable systems. A comprehensive selection of transducer probes facilitates multiple applications in both cardiac and vascular imaging.

At this week’s meeting of the Heart Rhythm Society Meeting, attendees can see a demonstration of CardioLab IT -Carto XP workflow integration in the GE Healthcare booth, #916.

ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform and treat disease, so their patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases, and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE ). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.

1 *APAF: N Engl J Med. 2006 Mar 2; 354(9):967-9; Catheter Ablation of Long-Lasting Persistent Atrial Fibrillation Critical Structures for Termination


Source: GE Healthcare

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