Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health signs MoU with GE Healthcare for advanced training

A recent McKinsey & Company study predicts that over the next 20 years, healthcare demand will rise by 240% in the GCC countries. Healthcare infrastructure and the availability of qualified and trained personnel will need to expand considerably to cope with this demand.

GE Healthcare has been established in Saudi Arabia for more than 25 years. The MoU agreement highlights GE Healthcare's commitment to Saudi Arabia, one of the largest health markets in the region.

The aim is to continue to address current healthcare challenges in the area of training and clinical expertise by delivering GE's innovative services and solutions focused on transforming healthcare delivery via collaborations, partnerships and regional support from the public and private sectors.

With the MoU agreement, GE Healthcare will continue to conduct clinical training programs for the Ministry's professionals, offer clinical education training on-line, engage senior professionals in leadership and decision making programs, share best practices in modern medicine, identify training opportunities for the staff and hold learning sessions on Change Acceleration Process and Six Sigma methodology and processes.

The goal is to train more than 600 technologists from the Ministry by offering 30 courses in the fields of Magnetic Resonance (MR), Computed Tomography (CT), and X-ray. This will be achieved by organizing 16 GE TiP TV days in 13 cities across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia within one year. Moreover, there will be four awareness sessions on Change Acceleration Process and Lean Six Sigma methodology and processes.

The successful initiative started in April 2007, with the first TiP TV workshop held for radiology technologists at the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health Training Center, Riyadh.

The assortment of TiP-TV sessions offered includes courses on Functional CT, Magnetic Resonance safety, MR Imaging, chest radiography and radiology problems related to obesity. For more than 10 years, GE's TiP-TV has provided quality continuing education and training programs to healthcare professionals around the world.

"Our association with the Ministry of Health for training programs is a landmark agreement for GE Healthcare in Saudi Arabia,"

said Jan De Witte, President and CEO, Services, EMEA, GE Healthcare.

"We are privileged to share our learning materials and change management experiences with the Saudi professionals, which will have a positive impact on the Kingdom's healthcare sector. By providing a training solution, we are proud to be playing our part in building the country's healthcare knowledge base."

With more than 180 talented and skilled professionals based in Saudi Arabia, GE Healthcare has a significant workforce dedicated to supporting Saudi's healthcare industry.

The company has significantly invested in its strategic country service support center in Riyadh.

This has led to an increase in the speed of customer response time, strongly supported by experienced local service & technical support teams.