GE Healthcare announced that its Aspire Ultrasound Certification programs have significantly enhanced the customer experience at the point of care, routine training

Attaining a certification credential requires a GE Healthcare service engineer to complete over 200 hours of online and classroom coursework. Certification curriculum is extremely robust. Service engineers accomplish significant technical product training and receive additional education in healthcare IT and networking. Seventy-five percent of this technical education is hands-on repair of products and IT networks. Extensive customer and professional skills training provide expertise in customer care. Certification also includes clinical application training - enabling service engineers to apply clinical knowledge to quickly solve problems and provide customer-specific solutions.

In addition to this rigorous training curriculum, Aspire certified engineers must complete a comprehensive skills assessment. The assessment consists of a written exam followed by resolution of service issues in a simulated customer environment. These customer scenarios allow service engineers to fully demonstrate the range of skills they achieve throughout the program. Only after successfully completing this capstone assessment can a service person be considered an Aspire Certified Professional.

In addition to ultrasound, GE Healthcare Aspire Certification Programs are required for engineers who provide service for Lunar bone mineral density, monitoring solutions and diagnostic cardiology, life support and maternal-infant care systems. To date, 104 ultrasound field and online engineers have achieved one or more certifications and have completed more than 21,000 hours of certification training. GE Healthcare projects it will have certified all of its ultrasound service professionals by mid-2009. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit www.gehealthcare.com.