OREANDA-NEWS. The National Basketball Association (NBA) and GE Healthcare (NYSE: GE) today conducted a successful meeting at GE’s Wisconsin offices to discuss the progress of their research collaboration.  The partnership, which commenced in July, promotes sports medicine research to benefit not only NBA players but athletes of all levels. 

Today’s meeting was attended by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, GE Healthcare U.S. and Canada President and CEO Marcelo Mosci and a senior leadership team comprised of executives from both companies.  The session reaffirmed a collective commitment to advance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal conditions among NBA players and to extend those findings to the broader population to help foster healthy, active lifestyles.

“Player health and wellness is our top priority, and the NBA’s research partnership with GE Healthcare is a significant step toward understanding injuries that affect NBA players,” said Silver.  “Both every day athletes and elite professionals will benefit from our collaboration, and I’d like to thank Marcelo and his team for their bold vision and hard work.”

The group’s discussions included an overview of the research collaboration, including the announcement of a call for research proposals on tendinopathy.  The collaboration will fund up to a total of $1,500,000 for researchers over a three-year period to support research addressing important unanswered questions regarding tendinopathy diagnosis, treatment and prevention in elite basketball athletes. 

 “At GE Healthcare, we are committed to investing in research and applying our know-how in healthcare imaging technology to address the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal injuries,” said Mosci. “It was a pleasure hosting Adam and his leadership team here in Milwaukee to collaborate and drive discussions on how we can advance innovative methods to address the health and wellness of elite athletes and the general population alike.”    

The call for proposals is guided by a strategic advisory board led by NBA Director of Sports Medicine Dr. John DiFiori, a steering committee and a panel of scientific peer reviewers.  Future calls for proposals may address bone stress injuries, articular cartilage injury and other important musculoskeletal issues affecting NBA players. 

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services to meet the demand for increased access, enhanced quality and more affordable healthcare around the world. GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter - great people and technologies taking on tough challenges. From medical imaging, software & IT, patient monitoring and diagnostics to drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies and performance improvement solutions, GE Healthcare helps medical professionals deliver great healthcare to their patients. 

About the NBA

The NBA is a global sports and media business built around three professional sports leagues: the National Basketball Association, the Women’s National Basketball Association, and the NBA Development League.  The league has established a major international presence with games and programming in 215 countries and territories in 49 languages, and NBA merchandise for sale in more than 125,000 stores in 100 countries on 6 continents.  NBA rosters at the start of the 2015-16 season featured 100 international players from 37 countries and territories.  NBA Digital’s assets include NBA.com and NBA Mobile, which achieved record traffic during the 2014-15 season, as well as NBA TV.  The NBA has created one of the largest social media communities in the world, with more than 915 million likes and followers globally across all league, team, and player platforms.  Through NBA Cares, the league addresses important social issues by working with internationally recognized youth-serving organizations that support education, youth and family development, and health-related causes.