Intermountain Press Release

Salt Lake City —GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric Company, and Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare announced an agreement today that will create new jobs in Utah as the two organizations jointly develop software products. These products will become the foundation for Intermountain's medical information systems and will eventually be available to Healthcare groups throughout the United States.

"This represents an exciting collaboration that will make a real difference in the world of Healthcare delivery," says Marc Probst, Intermountain's chief information officer. "It's exciting to consider that the patient information systems available to Intermountain-area residents will soon be available to health systems around the world."

"Intermountain complements the resources and skills that GE brings to the table," says Vishal Wanchoo, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Information Technologies. "GE is a leader in developing information technology; Intermountain is a leader in clinical data and patient care. Both companies share the same overall goal of providing the best healthcare for everyone. There are many Healthcare organizations bigger than Intermountain, but none better."

"The collaboration between GE and Intermountain, and the research project they are announcing today, is significant and will put Utah at the forefront of efforts to enhance patient care and safety," says Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. "The medical implications of the project are vast, as are the benefits to Utah's economy and stature in the high technology and biotechnology industries."

The joint development team will be based in West Valley City. The project will initially create upwards of 100 new jobs in the state. That number will likely increase over the course of the project.

The collaboration is a 10-year arrangement that will leverage Intermountain's clinical outcomes research and GE's clinical software applications and market depth. The two organizations will co-develop technologies in a clinical research lab where healthcare professionals and software designers collaborate to create electronic health record technologies.

Specifically, the project will incorporate computer software programs GE has created with Intermountain's standards of patient care. The new software will improve the way patients receive care in both hospitals and clinics, accelerate the adoption of electronic medical records among health systems in the United States, and consolidate patient information from every area in a hospital into patients' comprehensive electronic medical records.

The first project is designing and implementing barcode enabled bedside care medication administration. The barcode technology will assist healthcare professionals with monitoring doses and medication interactions, downloading the information into the patient's electronic health record.

According to Wanchoo, the new software will help to make national electronic health records possible. "These projects have the potential to do for healthcare what the Internet did for research — information will no longer be tied to a physical location, like in a book or at a local library, but will be available in seconds on a computer, to health professionals anywhere," says Wanchoo.

In 2004, President George W. Bush called for electronic health records for all United States citizens within the next decade. However, without nationally accepted procedures in place, transferring patient information across healthcare systems and networks isn't feasible. Developing technologies with clinical depth that are non-proprietary is essential to bringing different regions and healthcare networks across the country together into one cohesive system.

Intermountain and GE began talking about an alliance about a year ago. Intermountain had been developing its own hospital software programs since the early 1970s, but was looking to find a partner to develop software programs that would meet its needs. GE had also been searching the healthcare industry for a partner to provide clinical expertise. GE recognized the partnership as an ideal way to expand the capabilities of its existing software programs and develop new programs.

The GE-Intermountain collaboration is unique in that Intermountain physicians, nurses and clinicians will provide the practical experience and knowledge that GE's engineers will put in their company's computer format to use across the country. Those who work in Healthcare and who will use this technology everyday will actually direct its design.

About GE Healthcare. GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies that will shape a new age of patient care. GE Healthcare's expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, disease research, drug discovery and biopharmaceuticals is dedicated to detecting disease earlier and tailoring treatment for individual patients. GE Healthcare offers a broad range of services to improve productivity in healthcare and enable healthcare providers to better diagnose, treat and manage patients with conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.

GE Healthcare is a $14 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) that is headquartered in the United Kingdom. Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 42,500 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

About Intermountain Healthcare. Intermountain is a nonprofit Healthcare organization based in Salt Lake City that has served the needs of Utah and Idaho residents for the past 30 years. The Intermountain system includes hospitals, clinics, health insurance plans, a physician group and affiliated physicians. Last year, in more than 147,000 cases, Intermountain hospitals and associated clinics provided $67 million in charitable assistance. A central part of Intermountain's mission is to provide quality medical care to persons from the Intermountain region with a medical need, regardless of ability to pay.