WAUWATOSA, WI - GE Healthcare, in response to customer demand for Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) education, has introduced a three-day "Essentials of DICOM" course for biomedical engineers, imaging technicians and hospital IT personnel.

One of the founding members of DICOM Standards Committee, GE Healthcare is offering the vendor-independent DICOM course to all technical support personnel to help them install and configure new systems and improve workflow, as well as, troubleshoot issues related to medical image transmission throughout the healthcare enterprise. The DICOM standard was created by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association to aid the distribution and viewing of medical images throughout hospitals and clinics. A single DICOM file contains both a header (which stores information about the patient's name, type of scan, etc.) and all of the image data.

The next available class is November 18, 2008 in Waukesha, Wisconsin (a suburb of Milwaukee).
"The days when DICOM issues affect the radiology department alone are over," said Michael Reed, GE Healthcare Education Services General Manager. "If biomedical engineers, IT and radiology department professionals can troubleshoot issues related to DICOM image communication and imaging system connectivity, this will help the entire healthcare organization reduce downtime and streamline workflow at the point of care."

"Customers specifically told us they needed training on how to troubleshoot such DICOM issues as failed associations, lost images and loss of connectivity with devices on the network," added Leanne Cordisco, Healthcare IT Program Manager. "The Essentials of DICOM course helps them address such issues at these points of care."

"The Essentials of DICOM class adds to our portfolio of healthcare IT education," Reed said. "We now offer a specialized class for just about any area of interest within the world of healthcare connectivity. Whether it is networking basics, security, wireless or DICOM, GE Healthcare provides hands-on training that is designed specifically for the healthcare environment. We believe there are few vendors in the healthcare or IT industries that offer such comprehensive educational courses."

Course objectives

* Identify the types of devices and their uses on a digital imaging network
* Understand digital imaging workflow and dataflow
* Identify where DICOM is used on a network
* Learn how to troubleshoot connectivity across the layers of the OSI model within an imaging network, and isolate network connectivity issues from DICOM configuration issues