WAUWATOSA, WIS. - GE Healthcare, the $17 billion business unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), today introduced the new Venue™ ultrasound product line to the medical market. The Venue 40, the first product launched, provides visualization for needle guidance procedures and rapid diagnostics in real-time at the bedside. These "point of care" settings are the fastest growing in ultrasound around the world. In the U.S., these applications grew an average of 30 percent per year over the past four years, as cited in a recent 2008 industry report issued by Klein Biomedical Consultants, an internationally recognized source of ultrasound market trends.

An intuitive touch screen and streamlined design make Venue 40 easy to use and easy to clean, especially for clinicians who use ultrasound to make immediate care decisions, or guide procedures.

Ultrasound offers visualization for procedures that are conventionally performed through traditional landmark techniques, without imaging technology. The Venue 40 comes in five versions, designed for specific procedures and diagnostic exams:

-Venue 40 Vascular Access: Allows placement of peripheral or central lines with exceptional visualization of anatomy and needle at the bedside.

-Venue 40 Anesthesia: Increases precision and clinical confidence with clear visualization of both anatomy and needle for performing regional nerve blocks.

-Venue 40 Interventional: Visualizes biopsy guidance, line placements and rapid diagnostics at the bedside. Applications include visualizing the needle for a breast biopsy or vein ablation, as well as other minimally invasive procedures.

-Venue 40 Musculoskeletal: Helps provide accurate diagnoses and treatment for the hospital, office or training room. Clinicians could use the device to diagnose, treat and monitor a patient with rheumatoid arthritis. Other applications include diagnosing and treating muscle, tendon and joint problems in sports medicine.

-Venue 40 Point of Care: Enables rapid diagnosis and cardiac assessment in the ICU/CCU, trauma bay or bedside. The device could be used to visualize an ICU patient's heart function and anatomy, or to help identify life-threatening abnormalities or free fluid in a trauma patient in the ER.

"GE's Venue 40 ultrasound system is a major advancement," said Dr. Jeff Swenson, Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Utah and Director of Anesthesia at the University of Utah Orthopaedic Center, Salt Lake City, Utah. "It's extremely user friendly and offers very precise images with little or no adjustment to the settings. As we increasingly use ultrasound for imaging, the Venue 40 technology will allow clinicians to image fascial planes and high resolution anatomy more safely."

Easy to use, mobile technology

Clinicians can execute all functions through an intuitive touch screen. Annotations and measurements can be entered quickly and precisely with a stylus. The sleek system is free from buttons, knobs or a keyboard on its touchscreen. Its small size and streamlined cart allows for imaging in some of the smallest of clinical spaces, such as at the bedside or in a trauma bay. The lightweight Venue 40 system can be easily transported from room to room. A clinician can quickly dock the compact ultrasound unit in the cart or table dock, without tools.

"The Venue 40 provides an easy-to-use ultrasound system with great image quality to help improve care for critically ill patients in the emergency department who need rapid diagnosis and procedural ultrasound guidance," said Dr. John Bailitz, Emergency Ultrasound Co-Director in the Department of Emergency Medicine at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Rush University Medical School, Chicago, Ill. "The system's user-friendly interface makes the Venue 40 an outstanding addition to the community emergency department, when purchasing their first bedside ultrasound system, as well as for emergency medicine physicians with variable training in emergency ultrasound."

Easy image quality

The Venue 40 is powered by GE's advanced imaging technology from high-end ultrasound systems. Features include:

-Concurrent acquisition technology, which uses an innovative dual beamformer to process twice as many data points for more accurate anatomical depiction.

-CrossXBeam™ and Speckle Reduction Imaging (SRI) for improved tissue definition and reduced noise

-Full-color 10.4" (26.4 cm) display provides a large image-to-screen proportion for enhanced viewing.

Easy to clean

The user interface is a single-surface screen without a monitor frame or seams that could potentially harbor contaminants. The probe connection is flush with the system, further reducing the places that germs can hide. The durable, fluid-resistant cover can be cleaned with a number of standard medical disinfectants, making the Venue 40 easy to clean between uses.

"The Venue 40 is a powerful, yet easy to use ultrasound system," said Said Seyed-Bolorforosh, Global General Manager of GE's Ultrasound Emerging Applications. "By simplifying the user interface and enhancing image quality, GE is helping empower clinicians to provide sophisticated imaging and higher quality procedures to more patients, in real-time at the bedside. In point-of-care settings, this ultimately will help improve the quality of health care around the world."

Venue joins GE's other ultrasound brands: LOGIQ® for general imaging, Vivid™ for cardiovascular imaging and Voluson® for women's health and specialty imaging.

For more information about Venue 40, visit www.venue.gehealthcare.com.

ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE:
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our "healthymagination" vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). 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 www.gehealthcare.com

Check out a video about it: