Transformational medical technologies and service provider - GE Healthcare is now focussed on imparting skills training to lab technicians, it’s President and Chief Executive (South Asia) Milan Rao said.

“We have, for over 25 years, worked extensively towards a healthier India, strengthening our design and Make in India capability to make healthcare affordable and accessible. Our endeavour at this juncture is to have a CT (Computed Tomography) in every district.”

“We sell equipments, but there is a dearth of trained hands to understand and communicate the readings. GE has therefore taken the initiative to develop the required skill set,” he continued.

Citing a survey, he said “the projected requirement of skilled technicians by 2020 is 2.7 million whereas the availability is estimated at 1.7 million, leaving a gap of one million. To address this issue of skill gap, we have started to work on building skills. We have created three skill centres across the country and looking at expanding fast.”

GE is preparing itself to partner with institutions (including hospitals and diagnostic centres) to train people, upgrade skills wherever required and create a curriculum for long term certificate programmes.

Reverting to the recent roll out of Revolution ACTs, the first CT system designed and developed by the company in India, he said “this is the 26{+t}{+h} product (in our 25 years of presence in India) that has been designed and made in India, built to take care of new users of CT in smaller towns.”

“We have 50 pre-orders for this CT, which is 40 per cent more affordable than a comparable CT made a year ago. We will be shipping these machines in the next one month,” he added.

Asked if the machine is totally indigenous, he said “a substantial percentage of the parts have been imported. We are striving to bring down the import component.”

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