The Brilliant Soap Box: Hospital Uses the Industrial Internet to Fight Hospital Infections

We’ve all marveled at the image of the heroic surgeon whose calm voice and steady hands save the patient. But, in some ways, the most consistently heroic act health care providers can take comes in the moments before the surgery begins.

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Proper hand washing is the easiest and most effective way to prevent hospital-acquired infections, which cause nearly 100,000 deaths each year and cost billions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But CDC data also shows that hand-washing by providers occurs only 55 percent of the time.

GE Healthcare and HCA’s Summerville Medical Center are now using the Industrial Internet, a network connecting doctors, patients, and machines, to improve that statistic. They’ve deployed GE’s AgileTrac RTLS (Real-Time Location System) Hand Hygiene solution, a software and data system that tracks clinicians’ hand washing.

Like a wet soap, this simple task can be surprisingly hard to grasp. But GE engineers designed AgileTrac to help track medical equipment, patients and staff. The system provides a real-time view of resources and how they are caring for patients, enabling doctors, nurses and managers to better predict and prevent problems.

It can also handle hand washing. Caregivers simply wear badges that count each room entry and exit and the use of soap or sanitizer dispensers. Everything is automated, no need to log in or interfere with existing hospital processes.

Tracking caregiver behavior is critical since approximately 20 to 40 percent of all hospital acquired infections are transmitted to patients by hospital employees, according to the American Journal of Infection Control. AgileTrac collects around 5,000 data points per day, compared with 700 data points per year from so-called “secret shopper” observation tactics. That data is used to track, and ultimately improve, the patient experience.

“The greatest value of this technology has proven to be the data – the fact you can look at individual workflows and departments and make changes accordingly. It’s a constant reminder to put the patient first,” said Summerville Medical Center CEO Louis Caputo.

The technology debuted in spring 2012 at the Summerville Medical Center's intensive care unit, which saw an immediate improvement. The medical center has expanded the program to surgery units and the ER since then. “Our collaboration with Summerville has been invaluable as we look to tackle one of healthcare’s toughest challenges in a data driven way,” said Fran Dirksmeier, general manager for global asset management at GE Healthcare.

Tongue Twister: When A Diving Accident Left a GE Engineer Quadriplegic, He Turned to Bionics for Help. Now He Is Driving His Wheelchair with the Flick of His Tongue

Four years ago, Jason Disanto’s life took a skid. For a dozen years, Disanto, who is 38-years old and has an easy smile, had been a globe-trotting GE engineer bringing electricity to people in West Africa, China, and South America. “Basically, there would be a green field,” he says. “We would go in and leave behind a power plant.” Then in April 2009, at home in Atlanta, he dove into his backyard pool and rammed his head against the concrete bottom.

The accident left Disanto paralyzed from the neck down. But it failed to subdue his spirit and the curiosity and engineering drive that animated his life and career.



Disanto spent the next four months in the hospital, first in the trauma center and then at Atlanta’s Shepherd Center, a renowned specialty hospital for people with severe spine and brain injuries. He soon made new friends. A group of graduate students and engineers from the Bionics Lab at the nearby Georgia Institute of Technology were at Shepherd testing high-tech gear designed to makes simple tasks, like turning a wheelchair or moving a computer cursor, easier for quadriplegics.

One such device was the tongue drive system. The technology tracks the position of a magnetic stud attached to the tongue and allows users to steer their wheelchairs by its movements. Disanto was intrigued.

One member of the team was Xueliang Huo, a graduate student from Ningbo, a Chinese seaport where Disanto built a power plant. They hit it off. Disanto started working with the team, using the tongue drive to navigate an obstacle course and control a computer. “We had a lot of sessions on functionality and the esthetics we needed to develop,” Disanto says. “For them, it’s a little bit difficult to understand the little nuances and the little ins-and-outs that somebody like me can provide.” For example, he helped the team to improve the steering. “They had it very jagged and jerky,” he says. “When you move faster the drive is actually more smooth.”

An early version of the tongue drive system tracked the magnetic stud with two plastic “booms” running down Disanto’s jawbones, like a couple of hands-free headsets. “When I moved my tongue to the top right-hand corner of my mouth, that would be a stop command,” he says. “If I go to the top left-hand corner of my mouth, that would make my wheelchair go forward. For the lower teeth, I can set up the left and right movement of the chair.”

The booms were a good first step. “One of the problems we encountered with the earliest headset was that it could shift on a user’s head and the system would need to be recalibrated,” says Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo, founder of the Bionics Lab. Disanto helped Ghovanloo test a new system with sensors fitted tightly inside a dental retainer.

The system links the retainer wirelessly via a Bluetooth with an iPhone running special software that interprets the tongue stud signals. Disanto can use the tongue drive to operate a computer, make calls, or flip a TV channel. “It’s an independence tool,” he says. “It’s also a little fashionable, I guess,” he says about his tongue stud. “I try to keep it discrete for business reasons.”

Disanto has business in mind because he is back at work as product service engineer. GE has set him up with a modified desk, voice activated software, a head mouse to operate the computer, and flexible hours. He goes to work with his personal assistant. “There are a lot of things I did before that I don't do too much of these days, such as car racing,” he says. “I used to travel a lot, and I'm slowly getting back into that.”


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Jason Disanto with Georgia Tech's Hung Yoo Park, Xueliang Huo, and Dr. Ghovanloo, mom Victoria Disanto, and GE colleagues Sherwyn Applewhaite and Abdul Wahab Memon (from left to right).
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Jason Disanto with his family. His brother-in-law George Cowles III, sister Ginalyn Cowles, nephew George Cowles IV, father Joseph Disanto, and mom Victoria Disanto.
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The circuitry for the new intraoral Tongue Drive System developed at Georgia Tech is embedded in this dental retainer worn in the mouth (right). The system interprets commands from seven different tongue movements to operate a computer (left) or maneuver an electrically powered wheelchair. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
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The dental appliance for the new intraoral tongue drive system contains magnetic field sensors mounted on its four corners that detect movement of a tiny magnet attached to the tongue. It also includes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and an induction coil to charge the battery. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
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Georgia Tech researchers designed this universal interface for the intraoral Tongue Drive System that attaches directly to a standard electric wheelchair. The interface boasts multiple functions: it not only holds the iPod, but also wirelessly receives the sensor data and delivers it to the iPod, connects the iPod to the wheelchair, charges the iPod, and includes a container where the dental retainer can be placed at night for charging. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
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Breaking the Ice: GE Global Research Scientists Achieve New Anti-Icing Breakthrough With Nanotechnology

Scientists from GE Global Research announced this morning yet another breakthrough in an ongoing project to develop new anti-icing applications from coatings created in the lab using nanotechnology, which involves the science of materials at a very tiny scale (a nanometer is one-billionth of one meter). At the nano-level, materials behave differently than they do at a normal scale, and GE material scientists have focused on creating superhydrophobic, or extremely water repellent, materials as coatings for surfaces that could prevent icing. The new research presented today shows that in addition to dramatically reducing ice adhesion on surfaces, the experimental “nanotextured” coatings also delay ice from forming under simulated atmospheric icing conditions in the lab. While a non-coated surface will experience ice formation almost immediately under those conditions, the GE researchers found that a surface with the nanotextured coating won’t for approximately 80 seconds.

Check out this video of water drops bouncing off superhydrophobic surfaces, captured using a high-speed camera at GE Global Research.




That delay could mean big efficiency gains and cost savings for operators of machines susceptible to ice buildup, such as jet engines and wind turbines. The EPA estimates that nearly 25 million gallons of deicing agents are used on aircraft departing from commercial airports in the U.S. every year. That’s in addition to the extensive, energy-intensive heating systems used on planes to prevent ice formation. GE’s scientists are also exploring applications of both low ice adhesion and anti-icing surfaces for the blades of wind turbines, battered as they often are by frozen wind, which can cause ice buildup and drag on their rotation.

And that’s not all. GE researchers are also developing superhydrophobic coatings to aid in moisture control in steam turbines, which can boost efficiency. Applied to other parts of a gas turbine, the nanocoatings can reduce “fouling,” enabling the turbine to run more efficiently and reduce maintenance shutdowns.

The Giraffe Dad

Mike and Jennifer Mills were looking to celebrate their wedding anniversary one Sunday last August. Jennifer was seven months pregnant with their third child. This could be their last chance to go out for some time. The couple lined up a babysitter, made dinner plans and even thought about catching a movie.

Father and son: Mike Mills and his son, Brayden Mills.

The plan didn’t work out. Instead, the couple spent the next five weeks caring for their newborn son at a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Jennifer woke Mike early morning on their big day. Her water broke. At 32 weeks, she was almost two months too early. They bundled their two small sleepy daughters into the car and Mike rushed the whole family to the hospital. Doctors worked to slow the birth. “Every day mattered,” Mills says. Most babies, for example, can’t breathe on their own this early. But Jennifer delivered son Brayden just three days later. He was eight weeks premature.

When Brayden came out crying and breathing on his own, the couple rejoiced. But he was tiny. He weighed just 4 pounds and 12 ounces, little more than half the weight of the average newborn. The nurses quickly laid Brayden inside a baby warmer, wheeled him into the NICU, and placed him inside an incubator.

When Mike saw the hospital equipment sustaining his son, he started to worry less. He is an 11-year GE veteran and Brayden’s Panda Warmer and Giraffe OmniBed incubator were both manufactured by GE workers in Laurel, Maryland, the very factory where he serves as plant manager. “I know the equipment and how it works,” he says. “But I’ve never seen it in action. Now you see it and it’s your own kid. You don’t understand the value of it until you have used it.”

Oh my!: Brayden Mills was born eight weeks early. He spent his first five weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit.

At NICU, doctors threaded a feeding tube through Brayden’s nose to his stomach and inserted IV needles close to his heart to supply his fragile body with medication and nutrients. “That was kind of frightening,” Mike says. The physicians also scanned Brayden’s head with ultrasound, performed X-rays, and many other procedures.

Little man and the machine: Brayden is resting in his Giraffe OmniBed incubator.

Brayden laid safely in his incubator during all of this. GE engineers designed the Giraffe OmniBed so that doctors and nurses could care for newborns without moving them. “They don’t like to be moved,” Mike says. “With the touch of a button, and without touching the baby, the lid opens up and [the nurse] can drop down the doors. They have complete access to the baby without moving him.”

Brayden spent 10 days inside the GE incubator before doctors transferred him to an open basinet in the NICU. Sometimes an alarm would go off and frighten Jennifer. “She’d look around for help and I’d say ‘It’s OK. I’ve heard this beep before in tests. It’s not the sound to worry about.’ Still, it was the longest five weeks in my life,” Mike says.

Brayden came home in mid-September, weighing six pounds. Today he is a healthy boy putting on more weight. But the hospital staff still remembers his dad. His handiness with the equipment even earned him a new nickname. Says Mike: “They called me the Giraffe Dad.”

Move Over Indiana Jones – GE Cameras Do Non-Invasive Tomb Exploration

Archaeologists exploring a newly discovered first-century tomb in Jerusalem have brought to bear some twenty-first century Remote Visual Inspection (RVI) equipment from GE. The Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cameras and VideoProbes enabled the crew from the University of North Carolina to unlock the secrets of the tomb without entering the chamber. What they discovered there will be revealed in a new documentary film and an accompanying book which launches today at the Discovery Times Square Museum in New York.

License to study this historically significant tomb in the East Talpiot section of Jerusalem was granted to the academic team under stipulation by religious groups and the Israel Antiquities Authority that nobody should enter the tomb, nor should anything be disturbed or retrieved.

Secrets of the tomb: A view of the inside of the 2,000-year-old tomb on the screen of the XLG3.

After drilling three eight-inch holes through two meters of rock, the team deployed a GE CA-Zoom PTZ camera attached to a mechanical/pneumatic arm designed by Hollywood prop maker, Walter Klassen. The crew also employed GE’s XLG3 video probe, which was able to snake its way through the ancient masonry and capture images from even more remote corners of the tomb.

Ultra sharp images were required to make the inscriptions on the ossuaries legible to viewers, so engineers from the Inspection Technologies business of GE Measurement & Control custom designed a high definition camera for the crew.

The project was launched and funded by Toronto based Associated Producers, with Discovery Channel backing. Titled “The Resurrection Tomb,” the documentary will air this spring in the U.S. on The Discovery Channel.

Shedding light on the past: The PTZ camera inside the tomb, illuminated by the XLG3 video probe.

GE’s RVI technology was developed for industrial applications such as inspection of jet engines for overhaul and repair. It is used to check for corrosion and cracks in machinery, to peer inside tanks and containers, down pipes, and through all sorts of apparatus on oil platforms, commercial heat exchangers, racecar engine blocks, and power generators. As David Jervis, Media Manager for GE Energy Measurement & Control says, “virtually any situation where you need to see inside something where your eye won’t take you.” The U.S. Air Force recently ordered a score of them, he says.

As is the case in ancient Jerusalem, technology designed for industry often turns out to have applications far beyond their initial intended use. “You’d say this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Jervis says, “but actually they’re doing something like it right now at the Tower of London, using the same equipment to inspect wooden horses there. You never know, we might find one thousand Greek soldiers inside.”

“A Living and Breathing Thing:” GE Opens New Appliance Plant in Louisville, First in 50 Years

Patti Beyl knows GE well. As a process operator at GE’s Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, Beyl has spent a quarter of a century making ranges, refrigerators and dishwashers. She’s been through tough times. “Three years ago we didn’t even know if we we’re going to be here,” Beyl said. Now she can celebrate.

Today GE opened a new $38 million manufacturing plant in Louisville, the first in the city since 1957. Workers at the factory will make high-tech GeoSpring hybrid water heaters whose production GE repatriated from China. “Being able to make a new thing in the U.S., that’s a big morale booster,” Beyl said. “It gives me a lot of pride.”

Home run: Process operator Patti Beyl helped bring GeoSpring to Louisville. “Being able to make a new thing in the U.S., that’s a big morale booster,” she says. “It gives me a lot of pride.” GE plans to invest $1 billion in the appliances business and create 1,300 American jobs by 2014.

GE managers decided to build the new plant in Louisville during two tense weeks in 2009. The country slogged through the worst recession in decades, costs rose and sales slumped. Keeping GeoSpring production abroad required a large investment.

The team in Kentucky ran costs calculations. If they brought in Lean manufacturing methods and cut waste, they could make the heater in the U.S. The local union was on board. “Taking waste out does not always mean taking out headcount,” said union leader Jerry Carney. “If Lean takes a job out on the line, it creates another one somewhere else.”

In the summer of 2009, Louisville managers pulled together a group of industrial designers, manufacturing engineers, purchasing managers, production operators, maintenance workers and others, and moved them to a large room in the Appliance Park. They took apart the heater and searched for savings. “With our backs against the wall we found a way and made it work,” manager Sam Duplessis said. “We’ve been in this room for nine months and everybody pulled together. It was like the perfect storm of creativity.”

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The new heater was more efficient, cheaper to make and had 20 percent fewer parts than the one made overseas. “We took the gloves off and did what it would require to be competitive,” said product manager Tom Zimmer.

The production line came next. John Webster, whose official title is maintenance “moonshiner,” scavenged discarder cardboard, foam, pipes, and wire around the factory. He used the material to build quarter-scale mock-ups of the heaters and production machinery. “This helped us understand some of the concepts that the people in the room were talking about,” Webster said.

The team used Webster's models to nail the product flow, and built a real assembly line. Patti Beyl and other other process operators nudged it to perfection. “In the past, that would be it,” Beyl said. “Engineers would build it and it wouldn’t be subject to change. But the production line is a living and breathing thing. We keep improving it and trying to make it smarter. We are all working together.”

The Chicken and Egg Solution: GE Grants Fund School Science, Transform Standards and Train for Good Jobs

Science is “really boring when all you do is read,” said eight-grader Corinne Dietrich from the Erie School District in Pennsylvania. “You visualize it better and understand it better when you’re using all this technology in the classroom.” Dietrich was speaking to a reporter from Erie Times-News about school work that included incubating chicken eggs and analyzing the movement of a worm. “All this technology” was microscopes, graphing calculators, science kits and other tools that her district bought with help from a $15 million GE Foundation grant.

The money was part of the Foundation’s six-year, $200 million Developing Futures program focused of finding new ways to teach science and math to American students from urban areas, and ultimately improve their job prospects.

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Building a better future: Grants from the GE Foundation give American students access to hands-on experiments that improve their science skills and job prospects.

This week the Foundation announced a new $18 million grant that brings this effort to the national level. The grant will help develop national learning standards and replace the uneven patchwork that exists today. “Our economy is facing an undeniable challenge – good paying jobs are going unfilled because U.S. workers don’t have the skills to fill the positions,” said Robert Corcoran, President and Chairman of the GE Foundation. “We must cultivate a highly educated workforce and we see the standards as a key component to answering this challenge.”

The standards, known as Common Core State Standards, or CCSS, set new rigorous expectations for students in literacy and math. So far officials in 46 states have signed on.

Money from the new $18 million grant will flow to Student Achievement Partners, whose founders David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba led the standards development. “The GE Foundation is going deep in this work and its commitment to improving public education for all students is exactly what it is going to take to seed real and lasting change,” Coleman said.

GE may also reap some benefit. Last year GE Transportation, which is based in Erie, announced that it would invest over $400 million to open new plants and upgrade old ones in Pennsylvania and Texas. Good engineers are always wanted. With luck, Corinne Dietrich, the budding Erie scientist, will keep GE in mind.

Fantastic Voyage: GE Invests in Bowel Surfing Capsule that May Help Doctors Detect Colon Cancer

There are better ways to pass time than prepping for a colonoscopy. This week, the GE healthymagination fund invested in Israeli company called Check-Cap Ltd. seeking to change that experience.

Inside knowledge: Check-Cap’s capsule may help doctors screen for polyps, the precursors of colorectal cancer.

Check-Cap designed an ingestible capsule that snaps pictures as it travels through the bowels. The device, which employs low energy X-ray-based technology to safely generate high resolution 3D imagery, may help doctors detect colorectal cancer. No cleansing involved. The capsule continuously transmits information to a wrist-worn data receiver. Patients can go play a round of golf or take a walk while the tiny device does its work. At the end of the journey, the capsule leaves the body the “natural” way.

The $250 million healthymagination fund invests in promising healthcare technology companies. It has focused on diagnostics, medical information management technology, and life sciences.

GE Healthcare and Check-Cap will also design and manufacture miniature cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) diagnostic imaging sensors placed inside each Check-Cap capsule. The sensors will give clinicians a full 360-degree view as the capsule moves through the colon. GE Healthcare has many years of experience in developing CZT-based detectors. Similar technologies have been used in the company’s nuclear medicine and bone densitometry systems.

Intrepid traveler: As it moves through the colon, the device transmits data to a wrist-worn receiver. No bowel cleansing required.

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in men and the second in women, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Almost 60 percent of the cases occur in developed regions. Globally, it is the fourth most common cause of death from cancer. About 608,000 deaths from colorectal cancer are estimated worldwide annually, accounting for 8 percent of all cancer deaths. In the United States, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer.

Check-Cap plans to introduce its capsule in the European Union in late 2013, subject to regulatory approval. The company is also in discussions with the U. S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA).