GE Healthcare today provided two updates on its continued efforts to support clinicians, governments and the broader healthcare community in the fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19).
GE Healthcare and Ford Motor Company will work together to scale the production of ventilators, arming clinicians with medical equipment important in the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Through this collaboration, Ford will provide its technical and production expertise with the goal of manufacturing a simplified design of GE Healthcare’s existing ventilator. This new system would be built specifically to address urgent needs during the pandemic, equipped with the essential functions required to safely treat COVID-19 patients.
“We are encouraged by how quickly companies from across industries have mobilized to help address the growing challenge we collectively face from COVID-19,” said GE Healthcare president and CEO Kieran Murphy. “We are proud to bring our clinical and technical expertise to this collaboration with Ford, working together to serve unprecedented demand for this life-saving technology and support clinicians as they meet patient needs.”
“We’re so proud to be working closely with GE Healthcare on this important effort, and we have empowered our teams of engineers and designers to be scrappy and creative to quickly help scale up their production of this vital equipment,” said Jim Hackett, Ford’s president and CEO.
Additionally, in alignment with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) guidance, GE Healthcare has provided information on its website on the use of its anesthesia devices for patients requiring mechanical ventilation. This information helps make ventilation capabilities more widely available to support patients with respiratory failure or difficulty breathing caused by COVID-19.Clinicians can use these details in the treatment of patients at their discretion. As a leading global provider of anesthesia devices with a global installed base of over 100,000 devices, this update provides immediate assistance in the global demand of ventilators.
This update follows an earlier statement from Murphy around the company’s efforts to increase its manufacturing capacity for medical equipment, including ventilators. Since the COVID-19 outbreak began, GE Healthcare has doubled its capacity of ventilator production and has plans to double it again by end ofQ2 2020 to address unprecedented demand – independent of the collaboration with Ford.
