Boston Scientific and GE Healthcare Announce their First Patient Data Link to Electronic Medical Record

NATICK, Mass. and BARRINGTON, Ill., Nov. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Boston Scientific Corporation and GE Healthcare today announced the industry's first patient data integration between a cardiac rhythm management remote monitoring system and a physician's electronic medical record, currently installed at Seattle Cardiology and Cardiology Consultants of Philadelphia.

The integration uses Boston Scientific's LATITUDE(R) Patient Management system to allow clinicians to access information from a patient's implanted cardiac device and store within the GE Centricity(R) Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system in the form of lab results.

"Having electronic access to a more comprehensive medical record enables me to provide even better care for my device patients," said R. Jeffrey Westcott, M.D., Director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, Swedish Heart and Vascular Institute, Seattle, WA. "The additional upside is less paperwork and the ability to easily collaborate with other physicians who are managing other aspects of the patient's care."

"The collaboration between GE Healthcare and Boston Scientific provides a more comprehensive patient record and enables physicians to make more accurate decisions regarding their patients," said Dr. Scott Hessen, Chief, Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology, Cardiology Consultants of Philadelphia, PA.

GE's Centricity EMR is an electronic medical record system that enables ambulatory care physicians and clinical staff to document patient encounters, streamline clinical workflow, and securely exchange clinical data with other providers, patients, and information systems. Among the most widely used ambulatory care electronic medical records, Centricity EMR empowers healthcare providers to deliver the highest quality of care at lower costs.

Boston Scientific's LATITUDE Patient Management system is designed to remotely monitor specific device and cardiac status information for physicians, which gives patients peace of mind knowing their device is being monitored on a scheduled basis. Since LATITUDE Patient Management was first introduced in 2005, more than 70,000 patients have been enrolled on the system at more than 1,700 clinics across the United States. The system is designed to promote compliance among patients while also enabling physicians to intervene earlier in a patient's care with actionable data.

Available as an optional component to the LATITUDE Patient Management system is the industry's first and only wireless weight scale and blood pressure cuff, which is aligned with the ACC/AHA physician society guidelines that recommend monitoring weight and blood pressure.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. GE Healthcare's expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company . Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at http://www.gehealthcare.com/.

About Boston Scientific

Boston Scientific is a worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices whose products are used in a broad range of interventional medical specialties. For more information, please visit: http://www.bostonscientific.com/.

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CONTACT: Boston Scientific Contacts: Paul Donovan 508-650-8541 (office) 508-667-5165 (mobile) Media Relations Dan Brennan 508-650-8538 (office) 617-459-2703 (mobile) Investor Relations GE Healthcare Contact: Jennifer Francis Media Relations 847-277-4427 (office) 630-338-6426 (mobile) jennifer.n.francis@ge.com