GE Healthcare and Boston Scientific Collaborate on Cardiovascular Imaging
Joint efforts will focus on intravascular ultrasound (IVUS)
PRNewswire-FirstCall
WAUKESHA, Wis. and NATICK, Mass.
(NYSE:BSX)

WAUKESHA, Wis. and NATICK, Mass., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- GE Healthcare (NYSE: GE) and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) market leader Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) today announced a collaboration that enables improved intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) workflow between the GE Healthcare Innova® Cardiovascular X-ray System and the Boston Scientific iLab® Ultrasound Imaging System. The iLab and Innova Systems will both be featured at the October 12-17 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) Scientific Symposium in Washington, D.C.

The Innova® System is the world's most trusted family of all-digital cardiovascular imaging systems. The Innova X-ray imaging systems provide users with excellent image quality with industry leading dose efficiency. Built on GE's industry leading Innova digital detector, the Innova System helps physicians clearly visualize fine vessels, precisely place stents and successfully perform critical procedures. Cardiologists in the cardiac cath lab use it when performing procedures to view and treat potential coronary artery blockages that could cause heart attacks or other serious cardiovascular damage. The system is designed to provide cardiologists with more information than ever before, resulting in better diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease.

"Instilling greater clinical confidence by delivering high performance, reliability and value to our customers is at the core of everything we do," said Jayant Saha, General Manager, Interventional Global Marketing for GE Healthcare. "IVUS has proved to be an important and indispensable diagnostic tool in interventional cardiology. Boston Scientific, a leading IVUS solutions provider, and GE look forward to offering the technological advances in the field of IVUS to our joint customers and the patients they care for."

The Boston Scientific iLab® Ultrasound Imaging System can be directly installed into the cardiac catheterization lab or radiology suite alongside the GE Innova X-ray System, enabling physicians to more readily incorporate IVUS technology into their procedures. With IVUS, a tiny catheter is inserted into the heart or into a vessel where high-frequency sound waves reflect off tissue or vessel walls. The reflected sound waves create a cross-sectional image from within the vessel or heart to aid in visualizing vessel and heart structure. IVUS is an important tool in determining treatment options because it is designed to offer a more complete picture from inside the artery or vessel and helps to optimize stent outcomes.

"Our cath lab has been a GE and Boston Scientific customer for over eight years. We recently installed an iLab system alongside our GE cath lab and have found that the use of both technologies has improved the ease of use in performing IVUS," said Francis Boucek, M.D., of Naples Community Hospital, FL.

"Any time two leadership companies like GE Healthcare and Boston Scientific pair together to offer workflow improvements, the patient benefits," said Hank Kucheman, Senior Vice President and Group President of Boston Scientific's Cardiovascular business. "The best technologies in the cardiovascular imaging business just got better and with our continued collaboration, GE Healthcare and Boston Scientific will bring best-in-class patient care to physicians around the world."

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 $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 http://www.gehealthcare.com/.

About Boston Scientific

Boston Scientific is a worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices whose products are used in a broad range of interventional medical specialties. For more information, please visit: http://www.bostonscientific.com/.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements may be identified by words like "anticipate," "expect," "project," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "intend" and similar words. These forward-looking statements are based on our beliefs, assumptions and estimates using information available to us at the time and are not intended to be guarantees of future events or performance. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements regarding our product performance, significance of event data, and our growth strategy. If our underlying assumptions turn out to be incorrect, or if certain risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. These factors, in some cases, have affected and in the future (together with other factors) could affect our ability to implement our business strategy and may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the statements expressed in this press release. As a result, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of our forward-looking statements.

Factors that may cause such differences include, among other things: future economic, competitive, reimbursement and regulatory conditions; new product introductions; demographic trends; intellectual property; litigation; financial market conditions; and, future business decisions made by us and our competitors. All of these factors are difficult or impossible to predict accurately and many of them are beyond our control. For a further list and description of these and other important risks and uncertainties that may affect our future operations, see Part I, Item 1A - Risk Factors in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we may update in Part II, Item 1A - Risk Factors in Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q we have filed or will file thereafter. We disclaim any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in our expectations or in events, conditions, or circumstances on which those expectations may be based, or that may affect the likelihood that actual results will differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. This cautionary statement is applicable to all forward-looking statements contained in this document.

  Contact for GE Healthcare:       Corey Miller
                                   414-469-5499 (mobile)
                                   Media Relations
                                   GE Healthcare

  Contacts for Boston Scientific:  Paul Donovan
                                   508-650-8541 (office)
                                   508-667-5165 (mobile)
                                   Media Relations
                                   Boston Scientific Corporation

                                   Larry Neumann
                                   508-650-8696 (office)
                                   Investor Relations
                                   Boston Scientific Corporation

SOURCE: Boston Scientific Corporation

CONTACT: Corey Miller, Media Relations of GE Healthcare, mobile,
+1-414-469-5499; or Media Relations, Paul Donovan, office, +1-508-650-8541 or
mobile, +1-508-667-5165 or Investor Relations, Larry Neumann, office,
+1-508-650-8696, both of Boston Scientific Corporation

Web site: http://www.bostonscientific.com/
http://www.gehealthcare.com/

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