GE Healthcare offers a comprehensive portfolio of open and closed microenvironments (incubators) designed to meet the specific needs of Labor & Delivery (L&D) and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Launched at this year’s Arab Health 2007, the BrainZ BRM2 Brain Monitor is a sophisticated bedside tool for detecting changes and abnormalities in the brain function of neonates.
Each year globally, 529,000 mothers die in pregnancy or childbirth, 3.3 million babies are stillborn, and 4 million more newborns die within 28 days of birth, according to the WHO World Health Report 2005. The same report estimates that each year over a million children who survive birth asphyxia develop problems such as cerebral palsy, learning difficulties and other disabilities.
Given the high incidence and improved survival rates of infants born critically ill along with problems in detecting and treating neonatal seizures, the BRM2 Brain Monitor is becoming a vital tool for neonatologists around the world. It is designed for continuous use in the NICU environment, allowing real-time neurological information 24 hours per day.
“Maternal-infant healthcare needs are not neatly categorized by class, income, or geography. In a world where too many women don’t survive childbirth and too many newborns don’t survive their first month, ensuring the health of every mother and infant is more than a social concern,” said Jayant Saha, GE Healthcare’s General Manager Maternal-Infant Care division for Europe, Middle East & Africa.
The BRM2 Brain Monitor acquires and displays information from both the right and left sides of the brain, to detect seizures or brain injury even when confined to a single hemisphere. This real-time, bilateral view of a patient's neurological status assists neonatal clinicians in the direction of care, while highlighting any need for neuro-imaging or further clinical intervention.
The BRM2 Brain Monitor is easy to use with intuitive navigation; easy to apply with non-invasive Hydrogel sensors; easy to interpret with raw EEG waveforms linked to compressed aEEG displays and easy to review with continuous on-line function allowing clinicians to review specific areas of the trace for brain activity details, including seizures.
With the increase in perinatal survival rates, clinical focus is now on improving long-term outcomes. This raises issues related to neurological function and brain injury.
Also highlighted at Arab Health 2007 is GE’s Maternal Infant-Care products range from the developmentally appropriate Giraffe® family of microenvironments for the NICU to the Infant Warmer Systems in the L&D. GE’s Corometrics™ 250 Series fetal monitoring helps diagnose any pathologic fetal heart rate during pregnancy and labor, helping to decrease the morbidity at birth. From an expectant mother’s first visit to her OB office, to the days after mother and baby leave the hospital, GE’s combined offering assists healthcare professionals in supporting the specialized needs of patients and families across the entire maternal-infant continuum.
“Inspired by our customers and learning from our partners worldwide, we strive to create simplified, clinically relevant, globally appropriate maternal-infant care solutions that support life from its earliest moments,” added Saha.
About GE Healthcare:
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.
GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention.
Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a US$17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.
