WEB FREE SOFTWARE

Intel works with GE on healthcare

bBy Michelle Fleury/bbr /Business reporter, BBC News, New Yorkbr /ppimg src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45464000/jpg/_45464607_intelapcopy.jpg" align="left" width="226" height="170" alt="Intel" border="0" vspace="4" hspace="4"/pp class="first"b General Electric and chip maker Intel have joined forces to develop hi-tech health care products that will allow patients to be treated at home./bp The two firms plan to invest $250m in the project over the next five years. /pp Intel is best known as the world's largest chip maker but it has been working hard over the past few years to grow a new business in health care. /pp GE already has a sizable business selling health care products to hospitals and insurance companies. /pp Neither company has been immune to the effects of the global economic downturn but they were confident that this could become a multi billion dollar business. /pp At the launch event in New York, Jeff Immelt, GE's chief executive told the BBC he had high hopes for the project. /pp quot;Neither Intel nor GE does anything to create small businesses,quot; Mr Immelt said. /pp quot;We do things to create big businesses.quot; /pp b Cutting costs/b/pp The Intel Health Guide, a special computer which allows doctors to remotely monitor, diagnose and consult with patients at home. /pp The technology could save hundreds of people from making repeated trips into hospital and could lower costs /pp quot;Something like 80% of the spending today in the health care system is on chronic care patients,quot; Paul Otellini, Intel's chief executive said. /pp quot;This has the potential to take that down dramatically because a day at home costs a heck of a lot less than a day in the hospital.quot; /pp As populations age in the US and in other countries, the two companies believe the market for using this kind of technology to manage chronic diseases could grow from $3bn a year to $7.7bn by 2012. /pp In the UK, the National Health Service in West Lothian is already piloting Intel's Personal Health System. /pp The deal comes as the Obama administration in the US has made improving the efficiency and lowering the cost of health care a major priority. /pp To achieve this, companies will have to play their part. /pp quot;I think business has an obligation when they have technology and new ideas and new market opportunities to step up,quot; said Mr Otellini. /pp quot;Government also has an obligation - sometimes as the payer or the regulator - to be aware of what technology can do,quot; he added. /phrpThis article is from the a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk"BBC News website/a. #169; British Broadcasting Corporation/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=pJc_llINhLA:ryxf3ejqs3M:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?i=pJc_llINhLA:ryxf3ejqs3M:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=pJc_llINhLA:ryxf3ejqs3M:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?i=pJc_llINhLA:ryxf3ejqs3M:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=pJc_llINhLA:ryxf3ejqs3M:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed/~4/pJc_llINhLA" height="1" width="1"/