RIYADH, 4 September 2007 — GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric Company, will offer 10 of its Training in Partnership Television (TiP-TV) sessions and additional hospital leadership seminars to Saudi health care professionals during the 1st Annual Riyadh Radiology Review (ARRR) conference here.
The conference, which began yesterday at the King Fahd Cultural Center, is set to continue until Sept. 6.
“Saudi Arabia is a key market for GE Healthcare and the 1st Annual Riyadh Radiology Review gives us an opportunity to address the issues of expanding demand for services within the Kingdom, and throughout the GCC,” said Isam Moursy, general manager, GE Healthcare, Middle East Africa Central Asia and Turkey (MEACAT) region.
“The TiP-TV sessions will also provide a platform in which we can showcase our capabilities as a leader in technologies and solutions, developed to meet health care providers’ needs to care for their patients,” he said.
According to a published report by McKinsey & Co. Inc on health care in the GCC region, direct costs of health care are expected to increase from the current SR4.5 billion to SR2.2 trillion by 2025. The increase is said by analysts to stem from the rapidly growing population estimated to be growing at a rate of nearly 4 percent annually and expected to increase from the current 27 million to 30 million by 2010 and to 36 million by 2030.
In April, GE Healthcare signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Health to train the Kingdom’s medical professionals with the focus on adding new insights into medical science and continuing medical education being administered through the use of GE’s TiP-TV sessions.
“GE’s significant presence at the ARRR conference illustrates its extended commitment to Saudi Arabia,” added Jan De Witte, VP of Services for GE Healthcare. “Since the late 1990s, GE Healthcare has been investing in building service infrastructures in Saudi Arabia, and we are continuing to invest by constructing a service center in Riyadh with the capacity of supporting the entire Middle East region,” De Witte said.
The assorted TiP-TV sessions to be offered at the ARRR include courses on Functional CT, Magnetic Response Safety, MR Imaging, chest radiology and radiology problems related to obesity. GE Healthcare is also expected to showcase advanced technologies and promote “early health” awareness at its stand during the ARRR event.
“We are trying to disseminate knowledge with regard to the radiology science field and to highlight the radiology field among other medical sciences,” Dr. Jehad Al-Watban, president of the Riyadh Radiology Club and organizer of the ARRR, told Arab News.
“The issue of continuing education is important because Saudi Arabia is a big country with a large number of specialist hospitals and a number of electronic solutions for training its medical staff in the newest radiology solutions such as online lecturing,” he said.
Also being highlighted at the conference is the need for more Saudi radiologists in the Kingdom as well as the benefits of the use of tele-radiology solutions such as Picture Archiving and Communication Systems or PACS.
