GE's sponsorship with the USOC provides U.S. team doctors "with groundbreaking technology to manage the health care of the athletes,” according to Eddie Pells of the AP. The deal, which runs through '20, will “put thousands of pages of medical records into a computerized database that will replace hundreds of pallets of paper records that used to be transported to the Olympics on a ship several weeks before the Games.” The Centricity Practice Solution will “make it easier to keep track of their diets, find out if an injured athlete is allergic to certain medicines and determine treatment for athletes in urgent situations.” GE’s role in the Olympic movement for years was “best seen through the lens of its ownership of NBC and the billions of dollars the network paid to televise the Games” in the U.S. Pells noted with a majority interest of NBC sold to Comcast, USOC CMO Lisa Baird “sees this as a new way for GE to stand out.” USOC Sports Medicine Clinics Dir Bill Moreau said that the “power of the program allows multiple people to see various bits of information simultaneously.” It makes “treating the athletes, especially in real-time situations at an event as big as the Olympics, a much more manageable task” (AP, 5/24).
