FierceHealthcare recently reported that GE Healthcare will bring $3 million to the table to fund the creation of a new center to train future medical imaging software developers, while University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) will develop a curriculum for the students. Of the $3 million commitment from GE, $1 million will be earmarked for the university’s Catalyst Grant program, which provides money for imaging research.
UWM’s first academic offering will be a graduate-level certificate in the area of computational imaging that will begin in fall 2013, offered alongside professional development curricula for GE Healthcare employees, according to Ethan Munson, chair of the UWM Department of Computer Science and leader of the new center.
Another driver of the partnership–a five-year joint effort, according to the school–was a desire to keep medical imaging jobs in state. GE currently has 6,500 employees in Wisconsin, according to the announcement, while a vast majority (85 percent) of graduates from UWM choose to remain in the state. The partnership allows GE to offer continuing education (CE) to its employees while growing its local talent pipeline; likewise, students who take some of the new classes will have internship and job opportunities with GE.
GE and UWM’s recognition of the need for CE funding is extremely important in light of the fact that imaging costs have been continuously rising over the years due to the increased detection and prevention results such technology yields.
“We want to draw from a stronger talent pool of local people,” Bill Berezowitz, vice president and general manager of imaging subsystems for GE, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Last year, GE Global Research and Analog Devices collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to launch the Medical Electronic Device Realization Center, aimed at exploring the interface between health IT and various types of medical devices.
In 2010, GE partnered with UPMC to test a PACS-like digital pathology system. The effort stemmed from a joint venture agreed upon by the two entities in 2008 to launch a new imaging company, Omnyx LLC