Blog: GE Qualibria brings decision support to patient bedside

GE Qualibria brings decision support to patient bedside

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn; March 3rd, 2010@ 7:57 am The next step beyond Electronic Medical Records (EMR) is integrating it with advice on what a doctor should do, at the bedside. That's what GE Healthcare is trying to do with its new "clinical knowledge platform," dubbed Qualibria. Qualibria was introduced at a small press breakfast during the HIMSS trade show. The development partner was Intermountain Healthcare, a Salt Lake City, Utah company that both offers health care plans and runs hospitals. This gives it an incentive to do cost effective care. A recent Dartmouth study said $40 billion could be saved a year by moving to the procedures Intermountain practices. Those procedures, along with coding, research and decision support tools, are now at the patient's bedside with Qualibria, which is "EMR agnostic" and so can ride above the systems hospitals have already installed. "The secret sauce is not only the clinical quality of Intermountain but the presentation of that knowledge," said Dr. Graham Hughes, chief medical officer for GE's Healthcare's Enterprise IT Systems division.