Frost & Sullivan Awards GE Healthcare ‘Price Performance Value’ Leadership in PET for North America 2011

Waukesha, Wisconsin - GE Healthcare today received the Price Performance Value Leadership Award in PET (Positron Emission Tomography) for North America 2011 from global research organization Frost & Sullivan.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the Price Performance Value Leadership Award is a prestigious recognition of GE Healthcare’s accomplishments in Positron Emission Tomography. Based on Frost & Sullivan’s analysis of the latest “value-based” systems currently being offering by PET/CT manufacturers, GE Healthcare’s Optima* PET/CT 560 was found to offer a higher price performance value than any other system on the market.

“We are pleased that the Optima PET/CT 560 is being recognized by Frost & Sullivan as the leader in the Price Performance Value category,” said Vivek Bhatt, general manager, PET/CT. “At GE Healthcare we are committed to developing products that increase access to life saving technologies, improve the quality of healthcare that patients receive, and do it in a cost effective way for our customers. The Optima PET/CT 560 was specifically designed to bring the unique benefits of PET/CT to more oncology patients, and to do it in a financially responsible way – while providing a path for customers to add performance features over time as their needs grow. It’s exciting to see the independent validation of our design by Frost and Sullivan.”

First to the market with PET/CT in 2001, GE Healthcare has built upon its excellence in PET/CT with the Optima PET/CT 560, an innovative scanner designed to address the demands of today’s healthcare environment. Combining superb image quality, high productivity and a patient friendly experience, the Optima PET/CT 560 can continuously deliver ongoing value over time. The system offers efficiency and investment protection with the capability to grow with the future needs of the clinical practice. From the uninterrupted full head to toe exam to the remarkable dose reduction features, the Optima PET/CT 560 was designed to help physicians put patients’ needs first. It includes advanced VUE Point HD intelligent 3D iterative reconstruction technique to enhance resolution for uncompromised image quality that can help enable clinicians to confidently detect small lesions and increase quantitative accuracy.

According to Frost & Sullivan, despite growing evidence pointing to its superior diagnostic capabilities in many applications within oncology and cardiology, PET/CT’s higher costs have been a deterrent to widespread adoption of this technology since its commercial introduction in 2001. Frost & Sullivan notes that the recent downturn in the U.S. economy and uncertainties surrounding healthcare reform further exasperated this challenge, as these circumstances intensified demand in the market for the more affordable imaging equipment that provides adequate performance in clinically relevant applications. Frost & Sullivan also notes the significant cost-barrier in PET/CT has prompted manufacturers of this technology to become more focused on developing systems that provide the highest performance at the lowest price point possible.

Frost & Sullivan used key benchmarking criteria to measure GE Healthcare’s performance for the Price Performance Value Leadership Award against competition. Those criteria include price competitiveness, features and performance, and ease of use.

*Trademark of General Electric Company

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 around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employees are 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.