Bloomberg TV: “Starting Bell” - Interview with Gene Cartwright, CEO, Omnyx

TRANSCRIPT: Bloomberg TV: “Starting Bell” - Interview with Gene Cartwright, CEO, Omnyx

LIU: General Electric and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center announced a partnership today, aimed at helping move even more of the health care industry into the digital age. The two will partner to create a company called Omnyx that will digitize microscope and glass slides. Well joining us now to talk more about this partnership is Gene Cartwright, he's CEO of the new company.

Gene, great to have you with us in the studio.

Mr. GENE CARTWRIGHT (CEO, Omnyx): Nice to be here.

LIU: OK. The question would be why did we take so long to develop something like this? You know, digital imaging has been around for a long, long time?

Mr. CARTWIGHT: That's right. Radiology has been digitized for quite a while, as has cardiology. But the pathology market is much more difficult to digitize because the images are so much larger. They are about 10 times the size of a radiology image. So, a typical image of one glass slide could be up to 10,000 megabytes of data.

LIU: When do you expect to roll this product out?

Mr. CARTWRIGHT: In less than two years.

LIU: Oh really? OK, and tell us, sort of the size and scope of the market that you see.

Mr. CARTWRIGHT: We envision the market will expand to be about a $2 billion market in several years. We will be addresing the market on a global basis, and we expect it to be adopted at about the same rate that digital radiology was adopted.

LIU: And would you be expanding this all at the same time in terms of the US, and Asia, and Europe?

Mr. CARTWRIGHT: That's correct. I mean, that is one of the advantages of being associated with GE, and Omnyx products will be sold throught the GE sales force, so we will be selling on a global basis.

LIU: I can see, obviously, the benefit of this. I mean, you've got speed, accuracy and efficiency, but what about the cost of this?

Mr. CARTWRIGHT: We will be selling our product effectively on a cost savings basis. So that is effectively our sales pitch, it will be cost savings. Because there are productivity savings, there will be also savings from a consultation standpoint. Today, glass slides have to be Fed Exed--people have to do a lot of driving around to do consultations, and that would be eliminated with digital.

LIU: Could you be more specific on this cost savings basis? I mean, how much would they save? How much would it--

Mr. CARTWIGHT: Yeah. We think that both the pathologists and a lot of the technicians--there will be about a 15 percent savings overall, something like that.

LIU: OK. And also, tell us in general like what is--what makes this venture really unique?

Mr. CARTWRIGHT: Well, it's unique because this problem is such a large problem that it had to be addressed by a company like GE, with the expertise of a medical institution like UPMC. There are lots of different aspects of the problem. There is streaming of the data, there's scanning of the image that has to be done in about a 30 second time frame. And then to roll it out on a global basis, and then tie the software back into the hospital system software. There are a lot of different pieces of the puzzle, and so it needed a large company like GE, with the expertise of UPMC.

LIU: All right, fantastic. Thank you very much, Gene, for joining us.

Mr. CARTWRIGHT: Thank you.

LIU: That was Gene Cartwright, CEO of the new company, Omnyx.