By Neil Versel
The long-awaited venture between GE Healthcare and Intel officially launched this week. Called Care Innovations, the 50/50 joint venture will concentrate on developing monitoring and information technologies to allow people with serious health conditions to live independently rather than be institutionalized in nursing homes or assisted-living facilities.
Care Innovations represents a combination of Intel’s Digital Health Group and the Home Health Division of GE Healthcare. The two companies formed a strategic alliance last April and announced the joint venture in August, drawing on talent from both organizations.
Louis Burns, former general manager of Intel’s Digital Health Group, is CEO of Care Innovations, while GE Healthcare Systems CEO Omar Ishrak is serving as chairman. Eric Dishman, who headed health innovation and policy at Intel, is director of health policy for the new venture. Care Innovations will have separate divisions for assistive technologies, disease management and independent living.
“Our vision as we launch this exciting new company is for Care Innovations to positively affect millions of people by providing innovative products and services that will enable new models of care,” Burns says in a press release. “Our passionate leadership team and board of managers will help drive the business strategy necessary to improve quality of care and patient empowerment while helping reduce healthcare costs through new technologies.”
The new firm will market existing telehealth and remote monitoring products such as the Intel Health Guide home monitoring system, Intel Reader, which converts text to speech, and GE QuietCare, a motion-sensing system that GE acquired when it purchased Living Independently Group in late 2009.
This focus on products is somewhat ironic, given that Dishman himself said in 2009 that home health needs a better understanding of the psychological and behavioral needs of aging patients more than it needs new technology.
Nevertheless, at the time they announced their partnership, GE and Intel committed a total of $250 million to R&D in telehealth and home monitoring over a five-year period, so expect to see plenty of investment in both products and process change.
For more on the JV, read the companies' press release
