GE Healthcare has announced a plan to invest more than $1 billion over five years in the development of its educational offerings to reach more than two million healthcare professionals worldwide by 2020, helping them improve healthcare from within through enhanced training programs and solutions for physicians, radiologists, technologists, midwives, nurses, biomedical engineers and beyond. Solutions will be geared to meet local needs and will include new clinical, product application, technical and leadership training and education.

"Challenges around localized capacity building, training and innovation are consistent themes for many healthcare systems and Ministries of Health around the world," said Mr John Flannery, president and CEO, GE Healthcare. He added, "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."

As part of this training commitment, GE Healthcare will continue to work with healthcare providers to build strategic programs that may also include technology, finance and consultancy services to help improve healthcare delivery and drive transformational change in the industry.

"Our focus is to develop meaningful, relevant education solutions that will help healthcare professionals create long-term value and positive measurable impact. By combining our heritage in medical technology, healthcare IT, software and life sciences, we can provide enhanced learning, insights and best practices that can make a real difference," said Mr Mario Lois, general manager, Global Education Services at GE Healthcare.

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.

This program builds on GE Healthcare's existing global training initiatives like Skill India Initiative, developed by GE Healthcare, brings together healthcare and education experts to train and educate more than 100,000 new and existing healthcare professionals in India over the next five years. GE Foundation has worked alongside local Ministries of Health for more than a decade through its Developing Health Globally initiative.