GE Healthcare Q2 performance

GE Healthcare saw solid results in a tough market this quarter, and we continued to deliver what our customers need now. With COVID-19 again dominating, we saw further increased demand for equipment used to care for COVID-19 patients, such as monitors and ventilators. Overall, on an organic basis orders declined 1 percent and revenue 4 percent, while margins remained flat.

Healthcare Systems orders increased 3 percent organically driven by demand for COVID-19 related equipment, including an order of approximately $300 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to deliver ventilators in partnership with Ford. This orders growth was partially offset by lower demand in Pharmaceutical Diagnostics –which continued to see fewer procedures being carried out – and in HCS, where other product lines with less correlation to COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment, were down including MR, Molecular Imaging and Ultrasound, as customers focused on resuming operations and delayed buying decisions.

During the second quarter, GE Healthcare continued to innovate. We deployed remote patient data monitoring technology to support critical COVID-19 patients, announced FDA clearance of deep-learning based MR Image reconstruction technology enabling shorter scans and better images, and launched a new AI suite to detect chest X-ray abnormalities. We also announced research to test how AI can help predict COVID-19 severity with the University of Oxford and Paris hospitals.

Importantly this quarter, we have been examining our approach to Inclusion and Diversity (I&D), against the background of the Black Lives Matter movement. To ensure we embed I&D into our business strategy, Luiz Verzegnassi was appointed Chief Diversity Officer at GE Healthcare, alongside his role as President and CEO of our Services business. We have already started to roll out unconscious bias training to our entire workforce and will continue to drive a culture of trust and belonging.

As we look to the future, COVID-19 has highlighted the need to build, invest in and scale a modern digitalized infrastructure to enable virtual health care. Hospital CEOs say their thinking about digital technology has progressed more in the last few months than in the past several years. Patient attitudes are changing rapidly, creating a new urgency around using digital to improve workflows, make systems more productive and help patients overcome fears.

The increased need for data visualisation and digital technologies to drive productivity and efficiency will only become more central to the health system going forward.

We’re looking to build a digital ecosystem and lead the industry towards an intelligence-based healthcare system. Digital is the future, and we see the opportunity to continue making real progress here.