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GE HealthCare is setting its sights on women’s health—literally.
The Chicago-based medical device company is teaming up with the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine to study MRI protocols for pelvic conditions commonly experienced by women, like endometriosis and ovarian cancer, and developing educational resources to support clinicians.
The goal is to improve women’s pelvic health and address gaps in medical research and healthcare by giving providers more resources to make informed decisions, diagnose diseases faster, and provide women more access to quality care, according to the company.
One 2023 Columbia University study found that 4% to 16% of women experience chronic pelvic pain (CPP), and that about half of cases remain undiagnosed.
“Diseases and conditions impacting female patients below the belly button are often misdiagnosed, misunderstood, and understudied in our industry,” Erin Angel, GE HealthCare’s global VP of research and scientific affairs, said in a press release.
Persistent pain. Estimates suggest that chronic pelvic pain accounts for $2.8 billion in healthcare spending, costing $16,970 to $20,898 per woman per year in the US.
GE HealthCare and the university’s Center for Translational Imaging and Precision Medicine plan to create trainings, educational materials, and protocols that will be made available to all GE HealthCare MRI users around the world, according to the company, though GE HealthCare declined to share with Healthcare Brew how many MRIs are in use.
“We are optimistic that the results of the project could support more standard adoption of advanced imaging techniques and ultimately empower clinicians to make more informed decisions,” Angel said in the release. “We believe this project can help bridge an important gap in women’s healthcare and increase access of innovative solutions to women around the world.”
GE HealthCare also recently teamed up with Amazon to develop a generative AI that are designed to predict and prevent rather than react to health outcomes, and it also partnered with Mass General Brigham last year to create an AI tool to help predict late arrivals and no-shows to appointments.