GE HealthCare officially ramped up a new production line at its Waukesha facility, located at 3000 N. Grandview Boulevard, this week.
The new manufacturing line is the first North American production line for the company’s Omni Legend system. The company expects to manufacture more than 100 systems per year. The systems will be made using the existing workforce at the Waukesha plant.
GE HealthCare’s Omni Legend PET/CT uses a high stopping power digital detector system for more than two times the sensitivity of prior digital scanners. This enables faster scan times and small lesion detectability. With the reduced scan times and optimization of image quality, the system helps address the increasing demand for imaging by enabling shorter scan time for higher patient throughput.
"We have been manufacturing PET/CT systems in Waukesha for more than 20 years. Now, with increasing demand for our Omni Legend system in the U.S. and Canada, we are expanding our capacity to meet customer needs," a GE HealthCare spokesperson said.
The introduction of the new production line in Waukesha supports the state’s designation as a BioHealth Tech Hub, according to a Thursday announcement from GE HealthCare. The company officially became a member of the hub earlier this year.
The Wisconsin Biohealth Tech Hub is working on
six interconnected projects focused on uniting innovation, manufacturing and workforce development initiatives across the region, while also building a “word-class personalized medicine center.”
“We are committed to enabling the broad adoption of precision care across care areas and practice of more personalized medicine, including theranostics,” said
Jay Hill, vice president, advanced technology, GE HealthCare. “Individualizing patient care and advanced diagnosis and therapies can help put patients on the right path, sooner — all with the goal of improving patient outcomes. Already, our Waukesha facility supports these efforts as a vital founding partner in the Wisconsin BioHealth Tech Hub for the development, production and delivery of next-generation imaging technology to increase diagnostic applications."
Last year, Chicago-based
GE HealthCare announced plans to shift operations at its Wauwatosa and Milwaukee facilities to its Waukesha campus.
