GE Healthcare Initiates Evaluation Period for New Global Patient Safety Network
Barrington, Illinois—GE Healthcare Performance Solutions, a unit of GE Healthcare announced the launch of a 90-day evaluation for its Global Patient Safety Network (GPSN), an online community for hospitals to collaborate with peers around the world with the goal of improving patient safety. Following the recent initiative announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish Hospital Engagement Networks (HENs), the GPSN will provide a resource for providers to meet the needs of HENs.
The Global Patient Safety Network is an online patient safety community operated under the GE Patient Safety Organization (GE PSO) designed to help healthcare professionals connect locally and globally with their peers to enhance and empower existing efforts to improve patient safety. The 90-day evaluation, which will run from April through June, offers hospitals the opportunity to collaborate with local and global peers and evaluate the GPSN without cost. Members will be able to connect with individuals across the global network as well as participate in specific activity with their local peers.
“There has never been more focus, globally, on improving patient safety. The challenge for individual leaders is to find information that is relevant to their specific, nuanced, sub-specialty situation. The role of the Global Patient Safety Network is to make it easier to find relevant content and to connect and share with global peers working on precisely the same issues,” said Jeff Terry, general manager, Operations Optimization, GE Healthcare Performance Solutions. “We believe the GPSN will help patient safety professionals accelerate their work to improve patient safety.”
The GPSN is a community of providers from around the world – U.S., UK and Canada – sharing knowledge about how to improve patient safety in a private, secure and near real-time environment. Within the larger GPSN community of hospitals and individuals, private sub-communities can also be established and “gardened” by leaders. GE plans to actively engage with participating hospitals during the evaluation to foster the design of the network with the goal of releasing a commercial offering in 2012.
The initiation of the GPSN evaluation comes on the heels of the HHS’ recent announcement that as a part of the Partnership for Patients (P4P) initiative, a nationwide public-private collaboration to improve the quality, safety, and affordability of healthcare for all Americans, $218 million will be designated toward developing Hospital Engagement Networks. Hospital Engagement Networks will help identify solutions already working to reduce healthcare acquired conditions, and work to spread them to other hospitals and health care providers. As an online, private patient safety community for the sharing of best practices and collaboration on patient safety initiatives, membership in the GPSN can help providers in meeting the goals of a P4P’s Health Engagement Network.
“Patient safety is a serious issue, not just in the United States but all over the world, affecting countless patients,” said Yvonne Robertson, lead director, North West London Health Innovation and Education Cluster, an early adopter of the GPSN. “While communicating honestly with other providers about patient safety can be intimidating, today’s global healthcare climate requires directness, cooperation and transparency. We expect that this patient safety network will overcome international barriers to collaboration, providing us valuable information that will ultimately contribute to a better-understood, safer care environment.”
For more information about Performance Solutions patient safety efforts go here.
About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.
Our “healthymagination” vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employees are committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit www.gehealthcare.com.