Why GE is getting imaginative about startups

The latest permutation of GE Healthymagination, beyond an ad slogan, is a $250 million Silicon Valley-based fund, complete with a brace of imported VCs. According to new CEO Sue Siegel, the partnerships with StartUpHealth (along with a slice of its companies; TA 10 Jan) and Rock Health are only the start. Their rounds begin at a thrifty $250,000 and they are targeting five areas: personalized (precision) medicine, clinical decision support, life sciences and cellular therapeutics, minimally invasive guidance and patient monitoring. Ms. Siegel notes GE’s current presence but that it needs to go ‘more mobile.’ (Is Care Innovations still in their thoughts, or plunged off the edge of their world?) For a GE, like pharmaceuticals a while ago, it’s evidently easier to buy than to instill innovation, but the investment cash is welcomed in starving health tech. A happily not-firewalled article in the Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch.