BOSTON – Steven Seltzer, MD, who heads the radiology department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital here, sees unlimited opportunity for improving patient care resulting from a new research partnership with GE Healthcare.

The focus of the research is on molecular imaging with the goal of using the data gathered to better target treatment for patients with cancer, neurological and heart disease. It’s an effort to personalize medicine.
“The collaboration of GE Healthcare’s resources in chemistry, biology, drug development, engineering and imaging technology with BWH’s strengths in clinical research create a partnership with unlimited potential to improve the care of patients,” Seltzer said.

Clinicians and scientists from Brigham and Women’s, a 777-bed teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and GE Healthcare plan to use molecular imaging and radiopharmaceutical development tools to develop personalized approaches to the diagnosis and management of patients.

And if more accurate diagnosis and treatment were not reward enough, recent analysis from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions indicates that the advantages of personalized medicine in tandem with comparative effectiveness and healthcare IT could achieve NPV (net-present-value) savings as high as $140 billion over 10 years.

“Ultimately, it’s the clinical processes – diagnoses and treatments – where the ROI for EHRs will be achieved – or not. This will depend on how well clinicians engage using EHRs as tools to improve the delivery of patient care,” said Russ Rudish, vice chairman and U.S. industry leader of Deloitte’s Health Care Provider industry group.
Data from the medical research in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is expected to leverage the molecular imaging research efforts at Brigham and Women’s and to quickly transition discoveries into the clinical environment.

“Collaborations of this caliber are direct investments in the future of healthcare,” said Terri Bresenham, vice president of GE Healthcare’s molecular imaging business. “Brigham and Women’s world-class patient care, in conjunction with their stellar research and clinical-trial track record, make them an optimal partner in discovering new MI technologies to diagnose and treat disease.”

Jean-Luc Vanderheyden, GE Healthcare’s global molecular imaging leader, agreed.

“The more we understand about disease from a clinical standpoint, the better equipped we are to build technologies to improve patient care,” he said “This collaboration has the ability to accelerate the process of developing more effective methods of diagnosing, treating and monitoring disease.”