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 As a Worldwide Partner of the Olympic Games, General Electric (GE) is the exclusive provider of a wide range of innovative products and services that are integral to a successful Games. Beginning with the 2006 Olympic Winter Games which will take place next month in Torino, Italy, GE's Olympic partnership is the company's first global sports sponsorship at the corporate level. S&T looks at how GE’s portable ultrasound systems in particular will be used at Torino and unveils how they are already having an impact in the field of sports medicine.
From providing power, lighting, security, transportation and modular space solutions at Olympic venues to supplying ultrasound and MRI equipment to help doctors treat athletes, GE aims to work closely with the Organising Committees, local municipalities and other Olympic Partners to understand their needs and deliver solutions.
GE's official product and service categories include: Energy Power Generation Systems, Energy Distribution, MRI & Ultrasound, Security, Lighting, Appliances, Plastics, Silicones, Aircraft Engines, Rail, Portable Structures, Water Purification, and Equipment and Transportation Management.
In addition, NBC Universal, a division of GE, is the exclusive US media partner of the Olympic Games. The GE and NBC Universal partnerships extend through 2012. GE's partnership with the Olympic Movement is managed by its corporate commercial and communications team in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA and Brussels, Belgium.
Advanced Ultrasound Systems One of the areas that GE believes will benefit the Games, starting with the Winter Games in Torino, will be through its implementation of advanced ultrasound technology to athletes.
GE will provide LOGIQ Book XP portable ultrasound systems to medical staff at athlete clinics in Torino, Sestriere, and Bardonecchia, and a mobile magnetic resonance (MR) unit in the mountains of Sestriere. In addition, GE will supply portable ultrasound systems to public hospitals in Torino, Pinerolo and Susa.
On 19 February, during the Games in Torino, GE will hold a press briefing in conjunction with Olympic athletes, research doctors, and representative from the International Olympic Committee, Games organiser TOROC, and the US Olympic Committee (USOC) on the latest portable ultrasound technologies being used in Torino to care for athletes.
Initial research results on studies will be announced (see below) and live demonstrations of ultrasound systems with Olympic athletes will be performed at the Games. Partnership with USOC USOC medical staff have already incorporated GE’s new portable ultrasound technology (originally tested with NASA astronauts) into its elite athlete care programme at its Olympic Training Centers and in Torino.
Portable ultrasound technology is being looked at as a major instrument in the future of sports medicine and the USOC is at the forefront of integrating this kind of technology in its sports medicine programme. In the past, athletes had to wait days to find out the severity of their injury but these new machines can help an athlete or trainer determine the severity of an injury in just a few minutes, without having to leave the field of play.
“The ability to assess athlete injuries immediately through graphic, moving ultrasound images, and to learn more about heart capacity through the cardiovascular research will be a huge advantage to US Olympians and hopefuls in their training and competition,” says Ed Ryan, USOC director of sports medicine. “GE’s new technology will allow us to support our athletes better than ever before. There’s no question that ultrasound technology will become a standard tool in healthcare for athletes.” Research studies A clinical study of US, Chinese and Italian Short Track Speedskaters carried out by the Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Centre in Boston used GE's new Vivid i - the world's most advanced miniaturised cardiovascular ultrasound system - to examine athletes' hearts pre- and post competition in an effort to learn more about the function and performance of highly-conditioned hearts and therefore gain new insight into techniques for diagnosing and treating heart disease.
“This study was the first-of-its-kind to investigate the cardiovascular effects of rest and activity of both short- and long-range athletes who follow fundamentally different training regimes,” says Dr Michael Picard, one of the research leaders. “We hope that our findings will enable new methods for more precise diagnosis of heart disease in everyone from Olympic athletes to the patients we see everyday.”
GE's Vivid i ultrasound system makes it possible for patients to receive full diagnostic exams anywhere, as opposed to being transported to an imaging lab in a hospital. In addition, physicians can wirelessly transfer files from the system to other physicians for instant consultation.
A second clinical study, being led by Marnix van Holsbeeck and Scott Dulchavsky of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, is focusing on improving the speed and efficiency of diagnosing musculoskeletal injuries in the shoulder and knee. Researchers will investigate, over the course of a year, whether taking healthy baseline scans of the US Women's Ice Hockey Team helps in determining the extent of future sports injuries with greater speed and accuracy.
In this study, researchers will use GE's LOGIQ Book XP system. According to Dr Dulchavsky, it is always a challenge to evaluate injuries in the field. “Having a healthy baseline scan of common injury sites, such as the shoulder and knee, as well as portable ultrasound technology on-site, could be a step that fundamentally improves our ability to care for athletes’ injuries. Our study with the female ice hockey players could ultimately be applied to any sport – benefiting athletes from any sport or skill level,” he adds.
Apolo Anton Ohno, 2002 Olympic Speedskating Gold Medalist in the 1,500m and Silver Medalist in the 1,000m, and Angela Ruggiero, US Women's Ice Hockey team 1998 Olympic Gold Medalist and 2002 Olympic Silver Medalist, have participated in the research and are serving as spokespeople for the cardiac and musculoskeletal research studies, respectively.
“GE’s innovation in imaging and miniaturisation is allowing ultrasound to play an increasingly important role in the early detection and diagnosis of many prevalent health issues, including heart disease, cancer, and fetal defects,” concludes Omar Ishrak, president and CEO of GE Healthcare’s Clinical Systems division. “We are particularly excited about our collaboration with leading medical experts and the USOC to further improve patient care for everyone.”
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