CTEC ownership moves to UWA

Simulator-based medical skills training centre Clinical Training and Education Centre (CTEC) will undergo a change in its ownership structure with the University of Western Australia seizing full ownership from joint venture partners, which include Perth businessman Danny Hill.

CTEC director Bernard Laurence said UWA would take full control late next month with all joint venture partners having essentially agreed to the transfer.

“All in all it wasn’t a very suitable model for running something like this,” he said. “There was concern over whether the joint venture partnership board was a suitable structure to enable CTEC to develop as rapidly and widely as it should.

“It was thought it would be very difficult to raise the sort of capital that we would need to invest in new equipment, and so on.”

Adjunct professor Laurence said two of the joint venture partners, the Royal College of Surgeons in England and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, had not contributed financially to CTEC, with the latter setting up its own skills unit in Melbourne and planning another for Sydney. 

“There were a very large number of stakeholders in CTEC that weren’t being recognised,” he said.

“The college of physicians, the college of anesthetists, the college of general practitioners … many, many stakeholders [who under the joint venture] were not being represented.”

Adjunct professor Laurence believes the new structure would suit CTEC’s aims better.

“It would be unsustainable if we just focused on a niche group of special interests like surgery,” he told WA Business News.

“It does need to be very broadly based.”

CTEC general manager David Edwards said the situation was indicative of the development of any organisation, where an initial core team was required to get the operation off the ground.

“We have simply moved to the next phase of development, through ownership and management by UWA, to take it to the next step,” he said.

Adjunct professor Laurence said CTEC was unique for the types of skills the centre was running.

“The majority of skills training units in the world are really specialist specific,” he said. “We have a much wider remit than that and this is really an educational centre for the whole of the medical profession and nursing profession including paramedical and so on.

“Last year we introduced a course on life support which was developed in England and we are about to introduce colonoscopy skills, which is very pertinent because the government is about to roll-out a screening program for bowel cancer.”

Adjunct professor Laurence told WA Business News CTEC had last year launched a system, called Axis Grid, providing remote supervised training to students in the central north-west of WA, technology he believes that could be transferred to the Asia Pacific region.

 The centre, launched in April 2000 and the brainchild of Perth businessman Danny Hill, provides simulator-based medical skills training in a range of specialties including surgery, nursing, anesthetics and medicine to between 4,500 and 5,000 students a year.

CTEC was a collaboration between the University of Western Australia, the government of Western Australia through HealthWest, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Surgeons in England and Mr Hill’s foundation.

The proposed investment from the joint venture partners was $12 million.