I’ve always (and still am) on the verge between practising as a physician and being a business person. Obviously it’s incredibally fulfilling to actually help patients on a one-to-one basis, however when being a “regular doc” you’ll always be laced to this and won’t be able to scale. That’s where a certain business or large-scale perspective comes into play. Imagine working for the WHO or developing new drugs as a pharmaceutical company – that’s a real chance to both make money and help people on a potentially extremely large, worldwide scale.
That’s probably one of the reasons why I really think that GE’s announcement today that they invest 6 billion dollars into it’s healthcare branch over the next years is superb. Meaning that they’ll try to force preventive medicine with more affordable CT scans, ultra portable Ultrasound Gears or by implementing some nifty Health/IT gadgets. I am not really sure of how one can call that – is it a marketing initiative, a branding thing, an actual strategic investment?
I am a littel bit affraid that this is only a Marketing Thing, but after watching the press speach of GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt I now think those guys really have some bold and great plans. Following up the Ecomagination campaign several years ago, GE sees it’s main competences and future revenue streams in Green Tech and Healthcare. Other than that almost the entire (Wannabe) think tank on the planet thinks pretty much the same, they are actually doing something and get their hands on.
healthymagination_presentation –
Let’s see what this announcement acutally brings to a specific patient’s life in the next years. I’ll try to pursue this and hope it’s not only words, but a real deal.
P.s: The twittersphere like it as well. And kudos to the state-of-the-art GE online Marketing Dept, which actually put a real life person in charge of managing it’s twitter account – that’s what it should be.
