Healthcare LMS - what it is, why you need it, and what are the use cases.

Viren Kapadia March 06, 2023
Healthcare LMS - what it is, why you need it, and what are the use cases.

Learning Management Systems have been helping enterprises drive their organizational onboarding, training, compliance, upskilling, and reskilling initiatives. These systems have been immensely helpful to enable anywhere-anytime learning, augment skill development and drive employee engagement by delivering impactful learning experiences. Most industries like banking and finance and IT have been using these systems to power online learning and other organizational activities. One industry, that has traditionally not been a part of this mix, is now starting to insert itself into the LMS conversation. That industry is healthcare.

What is Healthcare LMS?

Healthcare LMS is a learning management system designed to meet the learning, and training and development needs of those operating within the healthcare ecosystem. Healthcare LMS is an e-learning platform designed for use in hospitals, medical device organizations, private practices, and health tech companies and all those working in this industry.

Healthcare LMS facilitates anytime-anywhere learning and allows HR teams and managers manage user data and enrolments in courses easily. Learning materials can be organized into easily digestible formats and training teams can create and disseminate comprehensive training and learning programs to manage the constant shifts in the healthcare ecosystem. These systems help the healthcare organizations elevate training outcomes by giving them the capacity to assess learner progress, collect statistics, and perform deep analysis to identify and drive improvement opportunities.

A healthcare Learning Management System also allows those operating in this space to train people on evolving technology, compliance, regulatory standards, guidelines, sales, best practices, onboarding, upskilling, etc. Given the benefits that healthcare LMS brings to the table, the healthcare LMS market is set to surpass US$3.5 billion by the end of 2030.

Benefits of Healthcare LMS

A healthcare LMS becomes essential today because the compliance and regulatory landscape has become dynamic and is constantly changing. The learning needs of healthcare professionals are also increasing as technology and digital technologies disrupt this industry. Sales cycles are becoming more complex and there is constant innovation in the medical devices market.

Research also proves that medical knowledge doubles every 73 days! As medical knowledge expands exponentially it increases the pressure on clinicians and practitioners to keep up with these changes. As such, disseminating training and certifications and keeping up with rapidly changing technologies and processes become critical.

Some of the clear advantages of healthcare LMS are:

  • Utilize self-paced and on-demand learning to help busy healthcare professionals learn anytime, anywhere.
  • Leverage a high degree of customization and personalization, blended learning support, and new-age features like gamification and improve learning outcomes by driving learner engagement and reducing cognitive load
  • Nurture a culture of compliant behavior by automating compliance management by hosting, delivering, and managing compliance training from one platform.
  • Simplify SOP training and deliver relevant training to employees and staff and avoid negligence and malpractice in the workplace for those operating in the space of labs, medicine formulations, etc.
  • Simplify and centralize training content management
  • Track employee learning progress, measure learning effectiveness, and identify training needs and effectiveness of training materials through data-driven insights.
  • Enable continuous learning, enhance medical competence, and elevate critical skills like team building, professionalism, interpersonal communication, etc. by increasing accessibility to learning materials, and guided courses, with a high degree of customization.
  • Serves different learning styles and integrate a wide variety of learning and training experiences
  • Drive employee engagement by providing opportunities for learning and career progression
  • Facilitate robust leadership development with technical and soft skill training
  • Enable critical power skill developments to meet the new world of work

Key Features of Healthcare LMS

While all LMS platforms allow anytime, anywhere learning and learning management capabilities, healthcare LMS has to do a little heavier lifting. These systems need a set of features that make them unique and hence, advantageous.

  1. Regulatory compliance
  2. Compliance with medical regulations such as HIPAA, ACTM, OSHA, etc. for healthcare LMS platforms. These regulations set strict standards for those operating in the healthcare space and for medical organizations, especially around technology use, data, and security.

    Non-compliance with these can have a direct business impact, and lead to challenges in conducting business, along with attracting heavy fines and penalties. The cost of compliance becomes higher as it impacts market perceptions and can wreak havoc on customer trust. Healthcare LMS platforms have to ensure compliance with regulatory standards and ensure complete security of all data and information.

  3. Easy content management
  4. Healthcare LMS has to host and deliver a range of eLearning content. Changing compliance and regulatory norms, technology evolution, digital transformation, and advancements in the space of healthcare need L&D to disseminate powerful, comprehensive, and intuitive blended learning programs. For this, they need robust content management capabilities to increase their responsiveness to the training and learning needs of the workforce.

    The LMS also has to enable self-guided learning where people can self-enroll, and self-register. The use of microlearning tools thus becomes essential for healthcare LMS platforms to help busy medical professionals stay on top of their learning needs while ensuring compliance at all times.

  5. Wireless accessibility
  6. Healthcare workers and professionals are extremely busy with overflowing schedules. As such, it becomes extremely hard for L&D teams to ensure participation in physical or fixed-time training programs.

    Healthcare professionals are extremely busy and time-crunched. A healthcare LMS platform helps address their learning needs by making information dissemination easier. L&D teams can disseminate comprehensive training programs, provide a centralized repository of information, and ensure the completion of training programs using an LMS platform.

    Wireless accessibility becomes crucial for healthcare LMS as it gives professionals anywhere-anytime access and allows them to take courses on their wireless devices like tablets and smartphones. The flexibility to learn according to the time of their convenience further increases learning outcomes as learners are more invested and engaged.

  7. Multilingual options
  8. Healthcare LMS has to host and deliver a range of eLearning content. Changing compliance and regulatory norms, technology evolution, digital transformation, and advancements in the space of healthcare need L&D to disseminate powerful, comprehensive, and intuitive blended learning programs. For this, they need robust content management capabilities to increase their responsiveness to the training and learning needs of the workforce.

    The LMS also has to enable self-guided learning where people can self-enroll, and self-register. The use of microlearning tools thus becomes essential for healthcare LMS platforms to help busy medical professionals stay on top of their learning needs while ensuring compliance at all times.

  9. Easy reporting and tracking
  10. The healthcare industry is extremely dynamic and fast-moving. Managing the daily activities of individuals working here is not an easy task. Insights into employees' progress and standing in their courses become important for organizations to manage learning needs and compliance requirements. Seeking this information manually at the individual level becomes effort-intensive, time-consuming, and often, error-prone.

    Comprehensive healthcare LMS platforms have inbuilt reporting and tracking systems. These help in identifying the employees who have completed courses and those who have not. The platform can also deliver customized reports and provide deep insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals taking the course. This allows proactive course correction and ensures higher completion rates.

    Healthcare LMS also must comply with HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11 regulation. It should also help organizations make use of predictive analytics to highlight potential compliance issues, determine skills shortages, and identify talent gaps.

  11. Inbuilt certification support
  12. Ensuring compliance with the rapidly changing rules and regulations of the healthcare industry is critical in this sector. Organizations have to have detailed records of all courses that have been completed and the records of the training taken by the individuals to clearly identify the skillsets each training contains.

    Healthcare LMS platforms thus have to provide inbuilt certification support to provide assurance and credibility to the trainees after the completion of courses. These capabilities allow organizations to make changes to learning and training plans to meet their organizational needs.

Healthcare LMS Use Cases

Apart from compliance training, Healthcare LMS has a multitude of use cases that improve healthcare outcomes. Here are a few of them:

  • Onboarding: Given the disparate schedules of healthcare workers, Healthcare platforms can be used to simplify the onboarding experience. These LMS platforms can be used to onboard new resources and deliver optimized, comprehensive, and personalized onboarding experiences that foster greater employee engagement.
  • Clinical education: Healthcare LMS platforms help medical professionals navigate any skill gaps, learn new standards and procedures, etc., and allow organizations to deliver training programs that improve patient outcomes. An LMS platform, for example, can be used to train doctors and staff on device usage or new standards and procedures.
  • Training on medical devices and products: While clinical education focuses on healthcare professionals, healthcare LMS can be used to meet the training and learning needs of sellers and other customer-facing teams. The LMS can be used effectively to deliver medical products and device education such as an artificial cardiac pacemaker and help the learners understand its value and selling points. LMS platforms can also be used to disseminate courses on medical devices and product evaluation and help organizations improve their sales outcomes while driving better customer experiences.

As the world of work adopts a hybrid avatar, providing equal learning and development opportunities to the entire workforce, in a location and device-agnostic manner contributes to organizational success. As the healthcare sector accelerates its journey along the path of digital transformation and evolves rapidly, everyone operating in the healthcare ecosystem, such as hospitals, private medical practices, health tech companies, etc. will all have to make training a key priority.

A comprehensive, AI-powered, robust, and secure healthcare LMS like GyrusAim provides invaluable support to help these organizations meet their learning needs, elevate client and patient experience, improve employee engagement and experience, and deliver better organizational outcomes.