Comments on: HIStalk Interviews Laurent Rotival, SVP/GM of Enterprise Solutions, GE Healthcare

By: CIOGuy

CIOGuy — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:34:02 +0000

We run a lot of hospitals and GE is the worst vendor I deal with from a service and accountability standpoint. All of the people that he mentions in his interview we have met with and they have made big promises. Nothing ever comes of the promises. GE has no idea how to do large account management and their customers pay the price for their dysfunctional business units not working together.

By: HISReader

HISReader — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:51:28 +0000

Haven’t seen that kind of random rambling in quite a while. Not impressed. Still feels like a money play.

By: Tim Kirk

Tim Kirk — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:05:07 +0000

Mr. HIStalk:

Great interview.

Mr. Rotival gave me a much clearer view of GE Healthcare strategy and the challenges the healthcare industry faces.

Thank you both.

By: Will Weider

Will Weider — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:23:51 +0000

I can’t believe that you did not ask him about his dealings with the Sheinhardt Wig Corporation.

By: Wow... Horrible Interview

Wow... Horrible Interview — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:42:28 +0000

Well, whoever in the marketing dept suggested Laurent speak with HISTalk must secretly work for a competitor because all this interview did was empower GE’s competitors. I can see salespeople competing against GE printing and forwarding this article all night to prospects. I’ll summarize what I got out of the interview:

- GE still can’t explain or keep track of all their new product names (”What is GE Centricity Enterprise? It’s CareCast, or LastWord. It’s our clinical system, except its not because we’re developing a new one with Intermountain, which will be called Centricity Enterprise 6… Got it?”)
- GE is upgrading CareCast and the release will be hard to implement like a whole new release, but without all the new functionality of a new release — and it’s taking forever to finish
- GE and Intermountain have 300+ (or 600+) people working on an EMR and after they get their sealegs they’re going to release a system (a complicated one) beyond the ER in a few years.
- GE has trusted their next-generation clinical systems to a CIO, not an MD, or a visionary. I also don’t get the sense he’s thinking about GE Centricity whatever in ten years, because he’ll expect to move on in 2-3 years, if that long.

I’m not really a Cerner, Eclipsys, or Epic fan, but if you buy from them you’re buying from executives that only ever think about healthcare software (and have learned a lot from healthcare software for years). Another thought… If IDX had never bought Phamis, those folks out in the Northwest would have made LastWord twice as good by now. Years have been lost in the mess of IDX and GE.