In most developed countries, at least some medical care is available no matter how dire the circumstances. But in China, which has the world's fastest growing economy, if a farmer or his family has a serious disease, his only hope is to have enough money saved to get through the crisis.

There are news reports day after day detailing how rural families struggle to raise 200,000 yuan (US$25,000) to seek a cure for their dear, sick father or mother, while their annual income for growing rice is just 5,000 yuan (US$625).

Developing health care facilities and medical systems for the nation's rural population has become one of the top issues for the government.

General Electric (GE) Healthcare, the world's largest diagnostic equipment provider and information technology company, has a predominant market share in top-level hospitals in many of the nation's cities, and considers this the right time to expand in China's vast rural areas.

"We are committed to the movement that the Chinese Ministry of Health is making to focus more on rural health," says Joe Hogan, chief executive officer of GE Healthcare.

During his trip to Beijing late last month, Hogan spoke enthusiastically about the marketplace, and says his firm is looking forward to a working partnership with healthcare clinicians and various key government officials, to try to support Chinese healthcare efforts.

The CEO tells China Business Weekly that large-scale medical equipment does not imply costliness, and that GE Healthcare has many types of high-performance equipment that operates at low cost items that are perfectly suited for the country's rural areas.

"We produce equipment with the characteristics of cost-effectiveness in the sense of portability and low-cost, such as CT, X-ray and portable ultra- sound machines," he explains. "These can be used in the hospitals and clinics in the countryside."

The medical equipment giant thinks positively of China's rural market potential, which has 600-700 million people. "The strategy is to make sure that there is proper infrastructure in place that can help to support the medical system," Hogan says. "What we have proposed to the government is the hub-and-spoke system in these areas."

The executive says that means the creation of larger regional centres, tied together by primary care clinics that help get patients to more advanced facilities through effective channels. This is an efficient method to prevent the duplication of facilities, equipment and doctors.

"GE Healthcare, which has a long product line, has advantages in providing proper alignment for hospitals and clinics of all levels," Hogan stresses.

China experience

The firm, with global leadership in diagnostics, entered China in 1979. The company claims that almost all top-level hospitals in China use GE-labelled CT, medical resonance imaging and X-ray systems.

"We are a pioneering company, since we don't just export equipment to China, but rather we have our own Chinese engineers and own production facilities in China for China," the CEO says. "We have been thinking of China as one of our most important countries in global business."

Currently, GE Healthcare has more than 3,000 staff in China, which the firm claims has given it a unique understanding of what the market needs. It says it's close to the Chinese healthcare marketplace overall, and will be able to provide the proper equipment.

China is not a homogeneous country, and the distribution of large-scale medical equipment should be considered with regard to the local economic development level. "We are mindful of working with the Chinese health service to determine the most appropriate and cost-effective medical equipment for a given region," Hogan says.

Installing the necessary medical equipment in rural communities will help improve the accuracy of diagnoses and reduce costs eventually, he continues.

To fulfill basic medical demands of the public, the Chinese government has carried out specific measures so as to establish medical systems in communities and to develop medical reforms in rural areas.

Inaccessibility and unaffordability in the healthcare system for the public is one of the top issues to be solved in China, from the government's point of view. Officials now manage medicine pricing, examination expenses, and the acquisition of large-scale medical facilities.

China currently is seriously short of medical resources, however. With its huge population accounting for 22 per cent of the world's people China's medical resources make up a mere 2 per cent of the total.

In addition, 80 per cent of the current medical resources are allocated to cities. Among them, two-thirds of such resources are centralized in large hospitals, while rural areas and urban communities are often deprived of medical resources.

As for medical care insurance, about 44.8 per cent of urban populations and 79.1 per cent of rural people have no healthcare insurance.

Besides focusing on rural communities, another strategy the company is eyeing is the "early health" model, which means care focused on pre-symptomatic disease detection, early diagnosis and disease prevention.

"We are focusing on early health, not late disease," Hogan notes.

The firm says this trend is particularly important in China since there are dramatically increasing rates of stroke, cancer, diabetes and heart disease. If the nation fails to control the growth of these problems, it will face not only millions of lives lost but also the potential loss of US$500 billion in national income over the next decade, according to the World Health Organization.

Early treatment

GE Healthcare says it is enabling doctors to find diseases earlier and treat them when there is less of a burden on the healthcare system.

"Today, most healthcare systems in the world are based on therapy, and people are treated when they get sick. Our entire portfolio is centred on how to keep people healthy, or when people do need therapy, targeting the minimum-invasive therapy," Hogan says.

He says that about 70 per cent of the world's medical resources are devoted to treating people for disease, but GE Healthcare anticipates that about 50 per cent of the resources should be devoted to treating people for disease, and the other half are for keeping people healthy. That means early diagnosis and early treatment is required.

Hogan cites the example of breast cancer, the early diagnosis and treatment of which will reduce chances of death and significantly lower the economic burden to society.

The company recently launched a survey on breast health together with portal, SOHU.com and the People's Liberation Army 307 Hospital, which it hopes will increase public awareness of breast cancer.

GE Healthcare, headquartered in the United Kingdom, is a US$15 billion unit of General Electric Company. Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 45,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

In 1991, the company set up its first factory in Beijing. Today, three independent research and development centres have been established to produce state-of-the-art medical products, officials say. Of all the products made in China, 60 per cent are exported.

This achievement has also qualified the company's Shanghai manufacturing site as the first one in China approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the production of terminally sterilized large-volume medical items and peripherals.

In China, the firm's revenues stood at US$700 million last year, accounting for more than 5 per cent of the firm's global revenues.