GE Provides Chinese Olympic Athletes ECGs for Cardiac Diagnosis

June 5, 2008 - GE Healthcare will provide electrocardiogram technologies (ECG) to the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) for diagnosing cardiac fitness of competing Chinese athletes to help ensure they achieve optimum performance during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

GE Healthcare will deliver its MAC 5500 resting ECG, one Dash 4000 bed-side monitor and one CASE STRESS ECG (including the T2100 treadmill). GE Healthcare’s ECG products are designed to help physicians in emerging markets, whether they work in a hospital setting or in a private practice, to better predict and diagnose patients at risk of heart disease.

Located at the Beijing Sports Medicine Hospital, GE Healthcare’s electrocardiogram technologies will be used by clinicians for routine athlete medical examinations of China’s National teams. Early diagnosis of an athlete’s cardiac function allows clinicians to develop more adaptive training programs for each athlete and in turn prepare them in the best possible way for reaching gold medal.

GE Healthcare’s MAC 5500 resting ECG comes with a suite of arrhythmia detection and ECG cardiovascular analysis and interpretation programs that allow clinicians to address a wider range of cardiac disease management needs.

GE Healthcare’s CASE Stress system, also provided to the COC, is an exercise testing system that combines hardware and software to acquire, manage and store stress-testing data. During the stress test, the athlete is put on a treadmill and must go through a rigorous exercise protocol while their ECG information is acquired. Capturing an ECG during exercise provides physicians with valuable information regarding cardiac performance and heart rate recovery times.

The lightweight and wireless DASH 4000 Patient Monitor will provide the COC with the adaptability to handle virtually any monitoring situation. Clinicians can use this flexible device to monitor physiologic parameter data in assessing the well being of the athletes' cardiovascular performance during their rigorous training period for the Olympic Games.

For more information: www.ge.com/olympicgames