Will enable physicians and nurses to receive clinical text-message and pager alerts throughout the hospital, enhancing clinical workflow

WAUKESHA, Wis. & GOTHENBURG, Sweden -- GE Healthcare and Ascom Wireless Solutions today released plans to launch a wireless hospital-wide messaging system, to improve workflow and communication for healthcare providers. The agreement aligns the GE Healthcare patient monitoring platform with Ascom’s wireless communication solutions to enable hospitals to customize, filter and send secondary alarms to clinicians’ Ascom Voice over IP (VoIP) phones, pagers and Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) handsets. This addresses challenges recently reported by Spyglass Consulting Group—incompatible hospital communications systems make it difficult for nurses to effectively communicate wirelessly.1

“By collaborating with Ascom, a global leader in on-site wireless communication systems, GE Healthcare is working to advance hospital alarm management and build on our vision to provide excellent access to quality patient information from most communication devices.”

Caregivers are highly mobile, yet require access to patient data to support critical-care decisions in near real-time. According to a recent Spyglass Consulting Group report, 66 percent of hospital-based nurses said their organizations had deployed VoIP-based communications to enable greater mobility, so they can perform their jobs more efficiently at the point of care.1

GE Healthcare and Ascom are committed to turning streams of disparate patient monitoring information into an improved clinical workflow for mobile caregivers. By interfacing wireless hardware and middleware with patient monitoring devices, GE Healthcare and Ascom offer hospitals a “one-stop” solution for wireless secondary alarm management. Mobile hospital-wide secondary alarm notifications, via automated text messaging or paging, offer enhancements to workflow by providing clinicians with clinical information anywhere throughout the hospital.

“Ascom sees GE Healthcare as an important clinical partner where we add mobility to the medical information,” said Fritz Mumenthaler, General Manager of the Wireless Solution Division and member of the Ascom Group Executive Board. “The cooperation between GE Healthcare and Ascom will allow hospital staff to better manage their time to increase patient satisfaction.”

“Increasingly, hospitals are leveraging wireless technologies to deliver clinical data directly to mobile devices, leading to valuable productivity gains,” said David Ataide, Vice President and General Manager of Monitoring Solutions and Diagnostic Cardiology, GE Healthcare. “By collaborating with Ascom, a global leader in on-site wireless communication systems, GE Healthcare is working to advance hospital alarm management and build on our vision to provide excellent access to quality patient information from most communication devices.”

Additional information about the CARESCAPE portfolio and GE Healthcare’s approach to patient monitoring can be viewed at www.gehealthcare.com. Additional information about the Ascom portfolio can be viewed at www.ascom.com.

About Ascom:

Ascom is an international solution provider with comprehensive technological know-how in Mission-Critical Communication. The company focuses on the areas of Wireless Solutions (high-value, customer-specific on-site communications solutions), Network Testing (a global market leader in testing and optimization solutions for mobile networks) and Security Communication (secure, reliable communication solutions for alerts, mobilization and tactical communication). The company is headquartered in Switzerland, has subsidiaries in 20 countries and a workforce of some 2,300 employees worldwide. Ascom registered shares (symbol ASCN) are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange in Zurich (Switzerland).

About GE Healthcare:

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our “healthymagination” vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $16 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.

For our latest news, please visit http://newsroom.gehealthcare.com

References

1 Spyglass Consulting Group, “Healthcare Without Bounds: Point of Care Communications for Nursing,” December 8, 2009.