On Thursday, July 25, GE HealthCare has announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop generative artificial intelligence (AI) models and applications specifically designed for medical use.
This partnership aims to address the challenge of data accessibility within the healthcare sector, which generates approximately one-third of all global data. The initiative focuses on creating tools that can assist healthcare professionals in efficiently analyzing complex medical data, enhancing processes like screenings, diagnoses, decision support, and workflow management.
Challenges in Healthcare Data Management
The healthcare industry faces a significant issue with data management, as much of the generated data remains underutilized. According to a Deloitte report, up to 97% of the data produced by hospitals goes unused. This data is often stored in diverse formats and systems, complicating access and analysis for doctors and researchers.
GE HealthCare, a provider of medical imaging, ultrasound, patient care, and pharmaceutical diagnostic solutions, believes that generative AI can play a crucial role in overcoming these challenges.
How GE HealthCare and AWS Will Help
The collaboration with AWS will enable GE HealthCare to develop AI models that can be integrated into healthcare operations, offering tools to streamline data utilization.
Dr. Taha Kass-Hout, GE HealthCare’s global chief science and technology officer, emphasized that these tools are intended to help hospitals and clinicians make the most of the data available to them. He highlighted that AWS’s involvement would expedite the development and deployment of web-based medical imaging applications, which are expected to provide radiologists and other healthcare professionals with improved access to analytics.
GE HealthCare already offers its own suite of AI tools, but the partnership with AWS will provide the necessary technical infrastructure to scale these efforts. The company plans to use AWS services such as Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker to train and build generative AI models.
Matt Wood, vice president of AI at AWS, noted that training these models requires substantial computational resources, data, and expertise, which AWS will contribute to the collaboration.
Generative AI’s Role in Internal Productivity
In addition to enhancing healthcare services, GE HealthCare is exploring the use of generative AI to improve internal productivity.
One of the initial projects includes utilizing Amazon Q Developer to provide real-time code suggestions for GE HealthCare’s software developers, aimed at increasing their efficiency. Dr. Kass-Hout assured that GE HealthCare maintains rigorous testing and standards for all its products, and this will also apply to the new generative AI applications. He also clarified that the company does not use customer data for training these models.
Initially, the newly developed AI models and applications will be available to GE HealthCare employees and customers. The company plans to extend access more broadly in the future, making these advanced tools available to a wider audience.
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