LMS for Healthcare

In healthcare, the personnel must attempt to enlarge their expertise, researching and learning the most recent advances in technology, medications, and treatment plans since it concerns the patient's life. That is why many countries, e.g. the USA, UK, and Canada, require medical professionals to carry on learning throughout their whole professional career. In this article, we will explain how using a Learning Management System can benefit your medical practice, what issues it can handle, and what features your prospective system needs to have.

How Belitsoft Can Help

Choosing the right LMS for healthcare and implementing it can be a daunting task. We support you in overcoming the challenges.

• Ready-made LMS. We equip you with an LMS that you can use almost immediately just upload the content you demand.
• Turnkey LMS. If none of the existing LMS’ fit your requirements, we develop a new one from scratch and tailor it to your business needs.
• LMS Customization. To modify an open-source LMS, we add the features you require or adapt the UI to your branding.
• Course Development. According to your request, we develop educational content and its format: from simple lectures to simulations and learning games.
• Consulting. Belitsoft has over 17 years of experience in eLearning and more than 5 years in Healthcare. We apply the knowledge we’ve gained to help you choose an LMS, structure your training, or secure the information.
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Why Use LMS in Healthcare?

Just like in any other domain, an LMS is an efficient and relatively simple way to organize training:

• Hosting all kinds of learning content: text-based, audio, video, learning games, etc.
• Tracking of user activity starts from logging in to course completion
• Sharing learning materials and other documents between learners and instructors is possible
• Discussing is easy with an online platform
• Examining learners' knowledge with tests is available

There is a variety of LMS’ on the market, and businesses of any size, budget and industry can select the one for them, despite its size, specialization, and budget.

Issues an LMS can Address

There are several peculiarities that an LMS has to be prepared to face if it is to be applied in a healthcare environment.

Examples of courses that the British NHS provides

Accreditation

The authority must approve continuing medical education (CME) to count towards CME credits as required by law. In the USA, this authority is the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME).

While there are 12 criteria for accreditation, we will focus on those that directly correlate with the benefits an LMS can provide.

Criterion 5: “The provider chooses educational formats for activities/interventions that are appropriate for the setting, objectives, and desired results of the activity.” A modern LMS can incorporate pretty much any electronic format, from text and webinars to interactive videos and learning games.

Criterion 12: “The provider gathers data or information and conducts a program-based analysis on the degree to which the CME mission of the provider has been met through the conduct of CME activities/educational interventions.“ Thanks to the advanced tracking and reporting available today, you’ll be able to gather the required data on the improvements in the knowledge level of your learners.

Criterion 13: “The provider identifies, plans and implements the desired changes in the overall program (e.g., planners, teachers, infrastructure, methods, resources, facilities, interventions) that are required to improve on the ability to meet the CME mission.” The flexibility of modern LMS allows making quick changes with minimal involvement of the IT-staff.

Overwork

It is no secret that US doctors are swamped with work: 80% of them are working at full capacity or above and 78% are experiencing at least some burnout. Between seeing patients and being slaved to an EHR, they barely have time to breathe, let alone learn.

So eLearning is a better fit than traditional or even blended format: information is accessible anytime and anywhere as long as there is access to the Internet.

A modern LMS also uniquely suits to provide microlearning - education through bite-sized materials and brief activities. A medical professional might not have an hour of time to watch a learning video, but finding a few 5-minute windows to do a couple of quick quizzes is much easier.

Relevance

While compliance with regulatory standards is important, providing up-to-date information that medical professionals can apply to their daily jobs is no less so.

Thanks to modern technology like Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) you can make sure that your learners get what they need.

It aptly compared LTI to a USB stick: it allows you to connect any learning tool (e.g. a course from a top educational institution) to your LMS. Valuable information can be added to the knowledge base whenever there is a need or an opportunity for it.

Trends in Healthcare Learning

There are two leading trends that shape continuing education for medical professionals.

1. Microlearning for overcoming burnout

Burnout is one of the major problems plaguing current doctors. About 2% of the US physicians want to leave the industry entirely, in part because of having to spend too much time doing clerical tasks and not enough - actually working with the patients.

“EHRs contribute to burnout by turning physicians into unhappy data-entry clerks, and also by enabling 24-hour patient access with no system to provide compensation or coverage,” Dr. Robert Wachter, professor and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said.

Therefore, microlearning - training with bite-sized lessons to consume quickly is gaining popularity in the Healthcare domain. Medical professionals can work toward their continuing education credits while standing in the traffic jam, on their morning commute, or whenever they can find 5-10 minutes for it.

2. Gamification for increasing engagement

Achieving a badge as a reward or introducing a leaderboard are a few of the elements of the gamification trend that has proved to be an effective way to increase motivation.

It has been a staple in corporate training for the last decade, and its use in Healthcare is thriving. Research has shown gamification helps improve learning outcomes, increase precision, and motivate the learners to better - metrics that translate to save lives.

For more information on gamification and how to use it, see our relevant articles: Gamification in eLearning and Gamification in Healthcare.

Healthcare LMS Features

What functions do you need to get the most out of your LMS for the medical field?

Cloud Deployment

A cloud-based system is one accessible through the internet. You don’t need to install it on the devices in your organization - just open your browser and type the required address. This also eliminates the request for upgrades and maintenance - the provider manages all these things.

Cloud deployment ensures your LMS is accessible whenever there is a demand.

eLearning Standards Compatibility

Unlike EHR/EMR systems, where interoperability is still an unsolved problem, the distance learning industry has several popular data formats that make information exchange easier.

• SCORM - an older standard that is still widespread.
• xAPI - the newest format quickly growing in popularity. It was designed to replace SCORM.
• LTI - as mentioned above, this is a standard that allows connecting various learning tools.

The first advantage these standards provide is the availability of learning materials. If your LMS is SCORM-compatible, for example, adding a SCORM-packaged course becomes a matter of a few clicks.

The second advantage is tracking capabilities. xAPI, for example, has been praised for the many things it can monitor and report on. MedStar Health (a provider in Washington DC and Maryland) used this standard to track the training of resuscitation medics by connecting it to some apps, including a defibrillator simulator.

Analytics and Reporting

Measuring the learners’ progress is not only a certification requirement but also a valuable tool for managing your employees’ competencies. An LMS usually has several pre-built reports and often allows creating your own custom ones.

Reports that could be useful for you include:

• Participation/Performance/Completion - these reports show how much time the learners spend in the system, how well do they perform and whether they finish the chosen course.
• Certification/Compliance tracking - these reports help monitor what your employees stand regarding the compliance requirements. They could also be helpful to the employees themselves.
• Satisfaction reports - demonstrates how happy your learners are with their course, instructor (if applicable) and the system.

Creating and adjusting the reports is a large topic, so consult with your LMS provider on how to approach it.

Blended Learning Support

Fully online learning might not be the best tool for anything. Some training formats literally require a hands-on approach. Accordingly, an LMS supports offline and mixed learning is important - it allows for the greatest diversity in knowledge transfer.

Take a look at the case of Bryan Health, for example. They have developed a mannequin-assisted simulation training for postpartum hemorrhage and successfully delivered it live. A good LMS enables you to include the info from that training, monitor your learners’ effectiveness during the course, and add the credits to your employees’ profiles.

Performance Management

The goal of CME is to improve medical professionals’ performance and patient outcomes. Without monitoring the said performance, there is no way to know whether this goal is being achieved.

Adding performance management capabilities to your LMS solves this problem, along with many others. For example, if you need to provide documentation for state officials or a grant committee, you can just print it out from the LMS data. If there are several employees in a department who are lagging in certain competencies, you can assign extra training only to them rather than the whole department.

In addition, you don’t have to track assessment dates anymore, as the system could do it automatically.

Gamification

Remaining one of the leading trends in eLearning for years, gamification involves the integration of elements of game-design into a non-gaming context. For example, granting awarding points to a learner who has completed a lesson or unlocking extra levels after finishing the previous ones.

Studies have revealed gamification increases student's effectiveness, motivation, engagement, and enjoyment. But, to gain the desired result, thorough planning is necessary. Thus, engaging the services of eLearning professionals might be helpful when setting up your own LMS from scratch.

Popular LMS’ for Healthcare

Let’s look at the LMS that are most often used by medical practices.

Top 3 LMS for Healthcare according to Capterra

Blackboard LMS for Business

Blackboard is a reliable and feature-rich LMS that is available in SaaS, on-premise, or self-managed hosting versions. It boasts a flexible course management function, in-built gamification, and robust tracking capabilities.

However, it has a few disadvantages:

• Slow. “It's also painfully slow to use, as it does constant server requests (just paste the URL for a Blackboard connection into http://www.webpagetest.org/ for testing). Sometimes one click every 15 seconds is all the system will react to when I'm using the grade book, etc. — in the "real" world, without captive users, no one would ever return to a site with those response times.”
• Counterintuitive. “While the features are wonderful, they are convoluted to utilize, requiring more steps than I would like, and can sometimes be "hidden" in such ways that I have to refer to user guides because it's not a very intuitive integration.”
• Giving students unrealistic expectations. “The law of unintended consequences applies to the blackboard. The same convenient and varied options that make the product great also give students more access (and unrealistic expectations) to their professors. This is great for the 5% of students who have helpful and legitimate questions, but obnoxious for those who expect instant responses, midnight submissions, and A grade for D papers because "they clearly are trying. Just look at their blackboard logs and see!"

Medical Lab LMS

Medical Lab LMS is a cloud-based solution that focuses on compliance training, continuing education, and other learning important for lab employees.

And this is what they think should be improved:

• Inconvenient mobile app. “The app version always requires me to enter a password again and again. It is very annoying. If the app can save my password, it would be great. When I have to enter two passwords for a single login, it becomes worse. I take a lot of time because I always login and logout of the app while I am studying on the train. Also, there is not a search function for finding all relevant material for a single topic.”
• UX Issues. “The thing I like least about the software is that sometimes the pictures for hematology in microbiology questions are too small, leading to wrong answers. On some phones I've had trouble loading questions that contain blood bank charts.”
• Subpar analytics. “I would like to see more on the analysis portion of the certification exam. Specifically, if a student takes the exam, there would be an option, possibly a quiz based on the area that the student was most deficient in. Currently, I rely on the student to look at the results and assign themselves another test on just that area.”

Skillport

Skillport is a cloud-based LMS developed by Skillsoft. People sometimes interchangeably use the names of Skillsoft and its cloud-based LMS, Skillport. It focuses on corporate eLearning, including training in the Healthcare domain.

This is what the users consider its disadvantages:

• Outdated admin panel. “The admin side of the software is extremely convoluted and dated. It is hard to keep the back end organized based on how the system is set up - this makes it very challenging to manage a large employee base. The reporting functionality is very limited. Often the same report will produce different results and it is challenging to pull accurate data. I would go with one of Skillsoft's updated softwares.”
• Lack of important features. “There are a few missing critical features in the basic Skillport LMS. The primary missing feature is the lack of manager tracking dashboards outside of the reporting tool.”