GE HealthCare has officially announced a flurry of new theranostics-enabling solutions, each one designed to drive clinical and operational excellence.
To understand the significance of such a development, we must take into account how, with diseases like cancer accounting for over 10 million deaths globally each year, healthcare industry has lately witnessed a sharp rise in demand for precision care, particularly theranostics.
This particular approach, on its part, packages together advanced diagnostic imaging and radiopharmaceuticals with targeted therapies to facilitate a personalized, patient-centric treatment which could improve disease detection, treatment accuracy, and overall quality of life.
“At GE HealthCare, we are dedicated to providing clinicians the precision care tools needed for the adoption and practice of theranostics,” said Jean-Luc Procaccini, President & CEO, Molecular Imaging & Computed Tomography, GE HealthCare. “We designed our portfolio of precision care solutions to evolve with healthcare system needs and help support a patient’s entire care journey – from the imaging equipment needed for a noninvasive look at a patient’s anatomy and treatment monitoring, to novel radiopharmaceuticals used to diagnose and monitor disease and the systems required to produce them, to the software optimized to enable data-driven decision-making.”
More on the given technology would reveal how theranostics keeps molecular imaging, such as positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) at the heart of everything. This it does due to their ability to conceive detailed, patient-specific insights and eventually guide treatment.
Having said so, being able to access these insights, including whole-body tumor burden that relays total amount of cancer is in the body, has traditionally required time-consuming manual analysis, thus unsurprisingly causing clinical and operational challenges.
In response, GE HealthCare brings forth, for starters, a LesionID Pro with automated zero-click pre-processing, which is meticulously backed by AI-powered automation to help physicians access reliable whole-body tumor burden statistics without having to spend hours manually segmenting lesions, removing normal physiologic uptake, and registering multiple patient images for comparison.
Next up, the company unveiled its latest cyclotron technology called MINItrace Magni. This one arrives bearing a small footprint (about the size of a commercial refrigerator), along with a goal of providing an easy-to-site, easy-to-install solution for reliable, in-house production of commercial PET tracers and radiometals, including Gallium-68, used in diagnostic imaging to support personalized care plans.
The idea here is to scale up the capabilities of a healthcare system, as well as bestow upon clinicians an ability to offer a variety of tracers to their patients. The innovation in question also encourages delivery of precision care locally, while simultaneously fuelling in-house Theranostics capabilities.
Another innovation we got to see from GE HealthCare was Omni Legend, a performance-focused PET/CT, which revolves around enabling clinicians to reduce dose by up to 40% and maintain exceptional image quality. The technology also supports diagnostic portion of theranostics.
Then, there is StarGuide, a digital SPECT/CT boasting 12 CZT detector design and the means to deliver high-quality 3D images and short scan times. The solution is further optimized for certain theranostic procedures.
Helping clinicians pinpoint the size, shape, and position of lesions, StarGuide also provides flexibility in patient scanning and workflow efficiencies to support high patient throughput and reduce complexity.
Such a mechanism can help oncology patients, especially those in pain, access short scans for enhanced comfort and overall experience.
Beyond that, we have Aurora, which happens to be an advanced dual-head SPECT/CT, featuring a 40 mm detector, twice the detector coverage compared to CTs of other hybrid systems. Aurora also reduces the dose up to 82% to support accurate quantitation, and at the same time, helps clinicians make the personalized care decisions that form the very basis of theranostics.
Rounding up highlights would be the Theranostics Pathway Manager Tile. Available on GE HealthCare’s Command Center software, the stated Pathway Manager Tile effectively simplifies time-consuming task of coordinating the theranostics care pathway.
Here, the technology leverages tracking information in regards to patient readiness for therapy. This does away with the need for manual data gathering across disparate systems (e.g., labs, scheduling, ordering, spreadsheets), and provides a unified, up-to-date view of each patient’s treatment journey.
