The GE Brief: September 9, 2021
HEALTHCARE MOMENTUM
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, there was an urgency among hospitals to do things differently. This meant not just telehealth visits but also remote monitoring of patients, remote staff training and more cloud-based patient data management. Now GE Healthcare and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are taking remote care, as well as precision care, to a new level.
The future is arriving: This new collaboration allows GE Healthcare’s advanced imaging software and Edison Health Services platform to operate on AWS. This means, for example, that when radiologists take CT, X-ray or MRI scans, the GE Healthcare suite of image-reading applications running on AWS could help their colleagues in remote locations interact more effectively with clinicians on-site. Ultimately, this could help improve diagnoses and lead to more personalized care.
Find out more here about this collaboration and its benefits.
THE SKY IS NO LIMIT
Decarbonizing the energy sector is one place where GE is helping address pressing global issues like climate change. Another area is aviation. As John Slattery, president and CEO of GE Aviation, recently pointed out, GE spent $1.8 billion in 2020 on aviation research and development, including new advanced materials and technologies that can help cut fuel consumption and even enable hybrid electric design.
Leaps and bounds: One recent example is the CFM RISE Program, short for Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines. Announced in June by CFM International, a 50-50 joint company between GE Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engines, it aims to improve fuel efficiency in new engines by more than 20% by the middle of the next decade. The work builds on the success of another CFM program, the LEAP engine, which has logged more than 10 million flight hours in five years of commercial service.
Take a look at some of the latest technologies helping GE engineers take aviation into the future.
MAKING INNOVATION LOOK LIKE A BREEZE
When GE Renewable Energy announced plans to build an offshore wind turbine so powerful it could generate enough electricity to supply the equivalent of 16,000 European homes a few years ago, the project began on the desk of GE engineer Vincent Schellings and his team. “We asked ourselves, ‘What is the biggest rotor we would still feel comfortable with?’” Schellings recalls, “and then we pushed ourselves some more.” The product of the effort, the Haliade-X, is the most powerful wind turbine ever built, in part thanks to its rotor, which spans 220 meters in diameter. In 2019, the turbine was one of Time magazine’s best inventions of the year, and now Schellings, chief technology officer for offshore wind at GE Renewable Energy, has just been recognized in the September issue of Fast Company as one of 2021’s “most creative people in business.”
Size matters: Fast Company’s list includes “72 individuals who’ve made strides this past year that no one has ever made before, people who are already having an impact on the world.” The Haliade-X has already been selected for wind farms in the U.K. and the U.S., including the massive Dogger Bank project, off the coast of England — projected to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm — and Vineyard Wind, off the coast of Massachusetts.
For more on the Fast Company list, click here. Read more about Haliade-X here and see it in action in the video below.
The Haliade-X 12 MW prototype in Rotterdam raised the bar for wind energy. It set a world record by generating enough energy in one day to power 30,000 Dutch households. GE’s massive new turbine will power the first two phases of the Dogger Bank wind farm in the North Sea, expected to be the world’s largest when completed. And the prototype is performing so well that the machines will be rated even higher — at 14 MW.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“The entire development really has been kind of a journey for us. On one side, we were figuring out how to develop it. On the other side, we were trying to figure out how to maximize the capability of the design that we had.”
— Vincent Schellings, chief technology officer for offshore wind, GE Renewable Energy
Quote: GE Reports. Images: Getty Images, GE Aviation, GE Renewable Energy. Video: GE Reports.