Joint EMR project targets practices nationwide

GE Healthcare and Intermountain Health Care are developing a clinical information system that GE will sell to other hospitals.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. March 14, 2005.

Intermountain Health Care, one of the earliest users of electronic medical records, and GE Healthcare have signed a letter of intent under which they will jointly develop a clinical information system that the latter will market to hospitals and large group practices nationwide.

Although the yet-to-be developed product is intended for large health care organizations, it also will play a role in GE Healthcare's marketing of its Centricity Physician Office EMR software for ambulatory practices, said Don Woodlock, general manager of inpatient clinical at GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric Co.

Doctors in communities where hospitals have installed GE systems will be able to easily "talk" electronically with those hospitals if they buy GE's ambulatory EMR product, formerly known as Logician. "If doctors buy other EMRs from other vendors they will be interoperable though interoperability may not be as deep [as it would be with the Centricity product line]," Woodlock said.

Under the proposed deal, expected to close this month, GE Healthcare will bear the bulk of the research and development costs associated with developing the system and Utah-based Intermountain Health Care will spend about $100 million to buy and install pharmacy, radiology and other departmental clinical systems at its 21 hospitals and 92 clinics, Woodlock said.

The starting point for the new system will be a system IHC has developed and used for the past 30 years and a system GE Healthcare has marketed to hospitals for three years, Woodlock said.