The Hindu Business Line : GE Healthcare ties up with Manipal Health

What it means
Using its doctors as investigators, Manipal will conduct 1,000 scans a year, initially contracted for three years, and return the raw data from these imagings to GE.
The hospital's chain of the Rs 280-crore Manipal Health Systems would be referral points.

HEALTHCARE CHALLENGES: Mr Dan Peters, President and CEO, Medical Diagnostics, GE Healthcare (left) and Dr Ranjan Pai, Chief Executive Officer, Manipal Education and Medical Group, at a press conference in Bangalore on Thursday. — G.R.N. Somashekar

Bangalore , June 29

Medical diagnostics major GE Healthcare has said it has roped in Manipal Health Systems as its India partner for its ongoing global clinical studies on its diagnostic products.

These are imaging agents being tested for diagnosis in oncology, neurology and cardiology. In the study starting in September, a GE integrated development centre (IDC) equipped with GE medical devices is to be set up at Manipal Hospital, Bangalore.

Using its doctors as investigators, Manipal will conduct 1,000 scans a year, initially contracted for three years, and return the raw data from these imagings to GE, according to top officials of the two companies.

Mr Dan Peters, President & CEO of Medical Diagnostics at GE Healthcare, told a news conference that the data from the first IDC in Bangalore would be part of a series of worldwide clinical trials spread across the US, European countries and Latin America.

Dr Ranjan Pai, CEO of Manipal Education & Medical Group, said MEMG would invest around Rs 35 crore in the equipment for the IDC.

The trials will use GE's scanners, viz. LightSpeed VCT, PET/CT scanner, dual head gamma camera with CT and twin speed high-definition MR imaging. The hospitals chain of the Rs 280-crore Manipal Health Systems would be referral points.

Only on Wednesday, Manipal announced a Rs 90-crore infusion by IDFC Private Equity Fund into its health systems.

According to Mr Peters, the first studies will be on the agent Visipaque (iodixanol) that GE launched in 1996 and used in X-ray and CT scans.

"The research efforts of GE Healthcare's Medical Diagnostics R&D team are currently focussed on functional and molecular imaging agents that help doctors evaluate the physiology of disease and make treatment decisions earlier, with confidence," he said.

The $15-billion GE Healthcare is a unit of General Electric, the $153-billion US giant.