GE Healthcare has announced a plan to invest more than $1 billion over five years to develop its educational offerings in an effort to train more than 2 million healthcare professionals worldwide by 2020.
The company notes that healthcare systems around the world face a wide range of difficult challenges, and all could benefit from training and education solutions focused specifically on their particular needs. In emerging economies, enabling access to affordable, basic primary care is often the most pressing concern, according to GE Healthcare.
The company aims to provide enhanced training programs and solutions for physicians, radiologists, technologists, midwives, nurses, and biomedical engineers, among others. The company reports that solutions will be geared to meeting local needs and will include new training and education in clinical practice, product application, technology, and leadership.
“Challenges around localized capacity building, training and innovation are consistent themes for many healthcare systems and Ministries of Health around the world,” said John Flannery, president and CEO of GE Healthcare. “We will continue to work closely with local governments, institutions, and customers to address some of their most important concerns. In some countries, this will mean training midwives to use new ultrasound or portable diagnostic equipment. In others, it will include supporting multi-hospital networks to enhance their clinical and operational outcomes.”
GE Healthcare will provide on-the-ground, online and remote training mostly as part of a commercial partnership with customers to help optimize health providers’ skills for real-life clinical situations. Examples of implementation could include peer-to-peer training provided by key opinion leaders among customers; virtual video conference training; clinical product training by certified clinical applications specialists; biomedical training supervised by technical instructors; and leadership training managed by certified GE professionals and consultants.
For more information on how GE aims to use its new education solutions to “upskill” healthcare professionals worldwide, visit the GE Healthcare website. Additional information about the company’s education and training programs is available on the company’s Developing Health Globally page.
