The centre offers training programmes designedaround the needs of healthcare technicians.It will also provide medical communities acrossthe region access to the most advanced medicaldiagnostics equipment and their operation thusaccelerating the delivery of quality healthcare.

Philips Medical Systems (Philips), a division of Royal Philips Electronics opened Asia Pacific's first Learning Centre for advanced medical diagnostics equipment training in Singapore, recently.

The centre offers training programmes designed around the needs of healthcare technicians. It will also provide medical communities across the region access to the most advanced medical diagnostics equipment and their operation thus accelerating the delivery of quality healthcare.

The 37,000 sq ft Singapore Learning Centre is the largest dedicated facility of its kind for advanced medical equipment training in the Asia Pacific region. The Euro 12 million centre is equipped with the most sophisticated medical diagnostics equipment, including cardio vascular X-ray, general X-ray, computer tomography (CT) scanner, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound systems and patient monitoring.

"The Singapore Learning Centre has been established in response to our rapid expansion and success in the Asia Pacific region where we are benefiting from double-digit growth rates over the past couple of years. The opening of the Centre reinforces our commitment to advancing healthcare in Asia Pacific,'' said Jouko Karvinen, CEO of Philips Medical Systems, in an official release.

Singapore serves as an ideal location for the centre as it is in the heart of Asia Pacific, as well as a vibrant medical hub in the region. The Singapore Government (EDB) has also shown keen interest to cooperate with local industries and has a strong focus to develop Singapore into a knowledge based society, he stated.

The centre will provide more than 4,000 training days during 2006 and increase to over 6,000 days over the next two years for healthcare technicians - from field sales and service engineers to marketing and application specialists, who require both theoretical and hands-on training for clinical practice..

The full range of most advanced products and solutions from Philips Medical Systems are featured in the learning centre. Large, sophisticated equipment like CTs and MRIs have a permanent place in the learning centre, while smaller pieces of equipment are available for "mobile" training sessions, where they can be shipped to other countries in Asia for more cost-effective on-location training.

Potential customers can also benefit by visiting the centre for application training or equipment demonstration when they are in the process of equipping their hospital.

The centre caters to the needs of the Asia Pacific, Australasia and the Middle East regions, and has on board nine full-time trainers who can deliver lectures in English and also in either Mandarin or Japanese. The intent is to hire three more trainers. For additional support there are 3 administrative staff on board.