GE Healthcare wasted no time before venturing into M&A as a newly standalone company.
After completing its spinoff last week from General Electric. GE Healthcare has agreed to acquire Imactis, a French developer of CT interventional guidance technology. Financial details were not disclosed, but the company said it plans to fund the transaction with cash on hand.
Stephane Lavellee and Lionel Carrat founded Imactis in 2009 and created the CT-Navigation system, an ergonomic universal solution designed to provide stereotactic needle guidance, enabling intuitive pre-planning and continuous control throughout a wide range of procedures, from diagnosis to treatment.
“We’re thrilled to take this step in strengthening our interventional guidance offering for patients and customers,” said Jan Makela, president and CEO of imaging at GE Healthcare. “The Imactis CT-Navigation system is designed to improve workflow for interventional radiologists and hospitals by increasing procedural accuracy, while helping to reduce procedure time and radiation dose for patients and physicians. It is an innovative navigation solution for image-guided percutaneous procedures that aims for better patient outcomes, by reducing variability for simple and complex procedures and improving reproducibility.”
GE Healthcare noted that interventional CT capabilities are considered a top purchase driver in the performance and premium CT segments, making it a high opportunity growth driver in the 2022-2026 period. The global interventional radiology market includes CT interventional guidance, and the Imactis acquisition provides GE Healthcare with access to the growing market, the company said.
“The timing to join GE Healthcare is perfect,” said Pierre Olivier, president and CEO at Imactis. “Our solution, which is already deployed in leading healthcare systems in Europe and the U.S., is ready to scale and become a standard of care, thanks to GE Healthcare’s market access. Our product development team also sees significant opportunities to integrate our hardware and software into GE Healthcare solutions and make the workflow of the interventional radiologists and oncologists even simpler and faster.”
UW Health, the academic medical center and health system of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, became the first U.S. hospital to acquire the Imactis CT-Navigation system back in 2019.
While this innovation currently focuses on CT, GE Healthcare said it plans to expand the technology to its image guided therapy business to drive further growth. Additionally, interventional guidance is increasing due to the growing worldwide need across an array of care areas including oncology, cardiology, urology, nephrology, and gastroenterology.
The Imactis CT-Navigation system, which includes an integrated workstation, guidance software, and disposable procedure kit, is currently approved under the European Union’s Medical Devices Regulation and has FDA clearance for use within the United States.
