GE CEO and Chairman Jeff Immelt and several venture capital partners announced a healthymagination open innovation Challenge to fund promising approaches to improve breast cancer diagnostics. Mr. Immelt also reported that GE will invest US$1 billion over the next five years on R&D programs to expand its suite of advanced technologies and solutions for cancer detection and treatment, beginning with breast cancer. “We envision a day when cancer is no longer a deadly disease,” said Mr. Immelt. “When you add our cutting-edge cancer detection technologies to the innovative ideas of our new partners, it’s a powerful formula for tackling cancer and helping doctors and researchers improve care.”

Nancy Brinker, founder and CEO, Susan G. Komen for the Cure (Dallas, TX, USA), said, “Extraordinary things can happen when you apply imagination to solve big problems. This initiative brings new innovation, commitment, and significant resources to the table, and we’re very excited about its potential to help us end suffering and death, on a global scale, from the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women.”

GE announced a $100 million global open innovation Challenge that seeks to identify and bring to market strategies that advance breast cancer diagnostics. The goal is to help healthcare professionals better understand tumors associated with triple negative cancer, a type of cancer that is less responsive to standard treatments and is typically more aggressive, as well as the molecular similarities between breast cancer and other solid tumors, improving early detection, allowing for more accurate diagnoses and ultimately helping clinicians make the best possible treatment decisions based on each patient’s unique cancer.

The Challenge is open immediately for entries online (Please see Related Links below). Challenge entrants will be evaluated by a committee of representatives from GE and venture capital partner firms. A separate, independent judging panel that includes GE executives, venture capital partners, and several leading healthcare luminaries will select the recipients of the $100,000 innovation seed grants. Winners will be announced in the first quarter of 2012.

Andrew von Eschenbach, GE healthymagination Challenge judge and healthymagination advisory board member said, “Scientific discovery and advances in technology have induced a tipping point in our understanding of cancer. To design and deliver integrated solutions for individual patients, we can no longer work in silos. We must combine our assets for diagnosis and therapy working in concert with partners across the private sector, government, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], and academia to create the right treatment for the right patient to achieve the right outcome, eliminating suffering and death from cancer.”

GE is also investing in the development of a first-in-kind “super database,” which will consolidate clinical, pathology, therapy, and outcomes data in one place to enable analysis and further accelerate innovation. This super database will be available in collaboration with leading cancer research, NGO, and government organizations, starting with relevant cancer data from GE’s Medical Quality Improvement Consortium; Clarient (Aliso Viejo, CA, USA), a GE Healthcare Company; the Premier healthcare alliance (Charlotte, NC, USA); and the US Department of Health & Human Services.

GE will launch new innovations that improve screening and breast cancer diagnosis, and help doctors ensure patients receive the right therapy for their tumor type.

John Dineen, president and CEO, GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK), said, “Cancer is a complex disease and because every patient’s cancer is different, oncologists need advanced tools to ‘fingerprint’ individual cancerous tumors. GE Healthcare continually breaks new ground in advanced diagnostic and molecular imaging equipment, partnering with hospitals and physicians to better manage patients throughout the cancer journey. We will continue to help doctors characterize cancer at the cellular level. This empowers them with the targeted information they need to prescribe the most accurate and effective therapy for their patient the first time.”

GE’s SenoCase is a breakthrough new ultraportable mammography device concept that will take a conventional digital mammography system and miniaturize it into an affordable portable unit the size of a large suitcase. This concept has the potential to transform access to breast health screenings for millions of women around the world, bringing life-saving technology to women where they live.

GE’s SenoBright, contrast-enhanced spectral mammography (CESM) is a breast screening technique that will enable more precise identification of breast cancer incidence for over one million women by 2020. SenoBright’s imaging technique, which combines digital mammography, low-and high-level X-rays and a common contrast agent, better identifies incidence of cancer, and helps to better select patients requiring biopsy. SenoBright will result in lower costs by reducing unneeded procedures and improving a doctor's ability to treat patients appropriately. SenoBright is currently 510k clearance pending at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and not available for sale in the United States. Outside the United States, SenoBright has been installed in 17 care centers across Europe and Asia.

Among the advanced technologies that GE scientists are working on is a new positron emission tomography (PET) tracer. The goal of this tracer is to help physicians assess whether particular cancer treatments are working very early in the course of therapy, by measuring new blood vessel formation in tumors.

GE announced a three-year partnership with Susan. G Komen for the Cure to forge first-in-kind programs that bring the latest breast cancer technologies to more women in the United States and around the world. Initially, these programs will run in Wyoming, Saudi Arabia, and China.

By taking an innovative approach to mobile mammography and applying a digital twist to appointment bookings, GE is partnering with a number of in-state organizations to help Wyoming address the challenges associated with being one of the most rural states in the United States.

GE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health established a mutual partnership aimed at increasing access to breast cancer screening. GE will develop and deploy two mobile screening units in Riyadh City with the goal of screening 10,000 women within the first 12 months with a plan to start in October 2011. It is also reaching out to leading universities to launch an open innovation challenge for Saudi women in an effort to identify sustainable methods for improving breast cancer screening in the country.

GE and partners will launch a broad outreach program later in 2011 in the Guangdong Province, China, aimed at raising awareness of and compliance with breast cancer screening procedures. The program will develop a local model to improve education and breast screening in rural areas.

GE Healthcare’s wide expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services helps to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. Moreover, GE partners with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems, according to company spokespersons.

Related Links:
GE Healthcare
Healthymagination Initiative
Healthymagination Challenge