Research into the use of image-guided focused ultrasound (IgFUS) as a noninvasive therapeutic modality is starting to achieve the kind of critical mass - in clinical outcomes data and R&D investment - necessary to win the interest and support of clinicians, payors, and regulators. Although there is still a good distance to travel before the technology achieves a routine place in the therapeutic toolkit, IgFUS is clearly an up-and-coming field in the medical device arena, and many believe it has the potential to revolutionize the treatment paradigm in a number of clinical areas.

To keep pace with market changes and the slow growth in many of its core businesses, GE Medical Systems (GEMS) has been expanding its role as a maker of diagnostic modalities and monitoring equipment to include clinical systems and productivity solutions for its customers. In keeping with GE's overall business philosophy, emphasizing information technology, GEMS is using the Internet to improve productivity for itself and its customers. By establishing itself as the best-in-class provider of products and services, GEMS expects to take market share from its competitors. But as GEMS moves into new hospital departments and up the hospital hierarchy to the CIO and CEO, it must not lose touch with what got it where it is--selling radiology, and more recently, cardiology, systems. The extent that GEMS can effectively grow its business using that model is unclear. Such systems and services may be limited to being an adjunct to the core business of selling imaging equipment, not the cornerstone for growth of a billion-dollar, information-propelled business.