COVID-19 has created unforeseen challenges for the American healthcare system. While the changing landscape brings new hurdles, there is no shortage of promising innovations on the horizon.

For independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers alike, healthcare AI application development, deployment, and commercialization is an intricate undertaking. Medical hardware is often proprietary, which brings complexity to the development process. Market penetration and product adoption are complex and challenging when trying to meet healthcare provider needs around efficiency and ease of use. Seamless integration with clinician workflows is imperative for widespread application adoption.

For healthcare providers, selecting an application that enhances quality of care is only part of the equation. The applications must be secure, compliant, and integrate well with their existing fleet. Moreover, they must avoid introducing unnecessary technical challenges to their IT departments, which can siphon valuable internal resources away from other projects.

Through the Edison Developer Program, GE Healthcare is leading the drive toward building and deploying innovative AI-driven applications. These applications are designed to meet healthcare providers’ ever-changing needs and assist them in their goals to maximize quality of care while improving efficiency.

An ecosystem for ISVs to bring world-class IT-driven solutions to market

Through the Edison Developer Program, independent software vendors and developers can participate in a global healthcare ecosystem with millions of potential customers. Dedicated Health IT experts at GE Healthcare champion builders and help them to navigate the complex healthcare environment at every step, from development, to deployment, and distribution. This is done so the focus can remain on building innovative applications and to help builders sidestep hurdles that inevitably slow down the time to market. The Edison Developer Program is purpose-built to streamline the development process, maximize the ease of deployment, and speed up the number of steps that lead to market access.

For example, developers can gain access to anonymized data for systems like the Vivid^™ E95, a premium 4D cardiovascular ultrasound system, through the Edison Developer Program. This allows developers to interface their applications with GE Healthcare technologies, enabling real-time data analytics in diagnostic settings through their applications. Vivid E95 data pipelines enable forward-thinking innovations in virtual and augmented reality, along algorithms that quantify heart function and ejection fraction (EF) values for diagnostics in cardiology. A combination of ready-to-use code, dedicated testing environments, and a broad network of pilot customers is what drives ISV success stories through the Edison Developer Program.

Edison Marketplace helps healthcare providers simplify application deployment

The benefit for healthcare providers is clear. They can enjoy a curated portfolio of secure applications and capabilities built to seamlessly integrate into their existing workflows—all selected from one single source: the Edison^™ Marketplace. Healthcare providers can trust the Edison Marketplace as a single source of innovative, secure applications, with a simplified purchase process and built for easy deployment. The overarching goal of improving quality of care and maximizing efficiency for healthcare providers is now achievable as a direct result of the Edison Developer Program.

MaxQ AI^® ACCIPIO^® Clinical Platform and the Edison Developer Program

To promote AI-driven software innovation, MaxQ AI has joined the Edison™ Ecosystem and is “…ushering in a new era of AI-augmented healthcare through a comprehensive, seamless, and secure platform of patient-level medical diagnostic solutions that will help across the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic pathways; potentially saving lives, improving the quality of care, and lowering healthcare costs…”--Randy Rohmer, Director of Commercial Operations, MaxQ AI

MaxQ AI, as part of the Edison Ecosystem, injects innovative AI processing into clinical workflows with the ACCIPIO platform. It integrates seamlessly at scale with computed tomography (CT) and picture archiving and communication system (PACS) imaging devices through the GE Healthcare Smart Subscription solution.

MaxQ AI will support the complete ACCIPIO^® Clinical Platform with INSIGHT^™.[1]  It will support the Radiology department, emergency room, neuroradiology, and stroke teams with a fully automated solution. The ACCIPIO^® Clinical Platform will provide tools for suspected positive intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) triage & prioritization (lx)[2], slice-level annotation (Ax)[3], lesion-level annotation (Ax Plus)[4] lesion-level quantification (Ax Pro)[5], triage of suspected positive and negative ICH (Dxg)[6], and diagnostic rule-out (Dx)[7]. This enables visual machine learning for expert-level insights across the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic pathways, making an important difference in the lives of patients and physicians alike

Share your software innovations through the Edison Developer Program

After the successful rollout of MaxQ AI’s ACCIPIO^® Clinical Platform with INSIGHT^™, GE Healthcare is eager to support additional ISVs in sharing their software innovations with the world.

All-inclusive distribution and marketing for ISVs

ISVs and developers need to hit the ground running with their fully developed applications, and the Edison Developer Program helps them to do just that. GE Healthcare Health IT experts conduct full beta testing pilots using participating healthcare providers, ensuring ISV applications are market-ready and scalable in clinical settings. From here, verified applications are made available[8] across the expansive GE Healthcare installed base via the Edison Ecosystem, delivering developer innovations right into the hands of healthcare providers. This includes full sales pipeline support via the Edison Marketplace, along with targeted and global marketing initiatives that deliver ISV innovations to healthcare providers that are seeking such innovations.

Streamlining software operations for healthcare providers

In busy healthcare settings, it is imperative that clinicians spend less time operating technology and more time analysing diagnostic information to deliver the care their patients need. Therefore, to simplify the selection, deployment, and orchestration of AI applications in clinical settings, GE Healthcare offers the Edison™ Open AI Orchestrator[9] to healthcare providers. This enables real-time analytics, delivering results, and contextualized recommendations in the “last mile” of clinical decision-making.

Broad partner integration

ISV applications can be used across a wide range of medical platforms and devices thanks to the standardized nature of the Edison™ platform. Rather than developing software to be compatible with each individual medical device, the GE Healthcare application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs) allow builders to develop for compatibility with one architecture. This allows ISVs to monitor and deploy a single application built for easier Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) and enable hardware-agnostic distribution across the expansive Edison Marketplace. This allows ISVs to make innovative products available to millions of Edison Marketplace customers, with healthcare providers benefiting from a unified storefront of AI applications.

Healthcare providers also benefit immensely from this partner integration. Acting as a unified storefront, the Edison Ecosystem allows clinicians to quickly and seamlessly integrate new applications into their workflow. Application updates are can be delivered over-the-air (OTA) as they become available, ensuring that the latest bug fixes and functionality is always present in sensitive clinical settings.

Delivering Innovation with the Edison Ecosystem

The Edison Marketplace helps to bring innovative ISVs and digitally savvy healthcare providers together through a centralized health-tech platform. This enables solution improvements to patient care, with minimal complexity for developers and clinicians alike. Whether you are an ISV or a healthcare provider, we encourage you to explore the Edison Developer Program to learn about how it can directly benefit you.

Learn more about future innovations and the Edison Developer Program.