Why e-Academies work in the NHS

e-learning course on the Safe Use of Insulin delivered to over 100,000 learnersA recent news story published here at Virtual College relates to the work we do with the NHS and how our Healthcare e-Academy, working together with the NHS Improving Quality team, has remarkably delivered “Safe Use of Insulin” training to over 100,000 people , an achievement with startling impact.I am hugely proud of this achievement, as this course was developed to save lives, and we can see from the numbers that it is already having a profound impact upon hospitals and the care they deliver. In fact today, Virtual College operates its Healthcare e-Academy in every NHS Trust in the UK.Since 2009 our Healthcare e-Academy has been working hard to support NHS hospitals in delivering this and other courses to their workforce, and our LMS, Enable, is providing both the delivery of the e-learning course and, crucially, the information required to demonstrate how well learners are engaging and completing the courses. The ability to deliver engaging and effective e-learning and track the learner journey through our LMS is at the heart of what we do at Virtual College, and our e-Academy model is designed to give us specialist insight into each area, with teams dedicated to that specific e-Academy.It is this dedication and level of specialisation that we bring to each of the e-Academies we operate that really makes the difference and ensures we deliver in real partnership such amazing and genuinely life changing e-learning programmes as the Safe Use of Insulin.Today we operate 11 e-Academies, of which three are directly related to healthcare: starting with the Lean Healthcare Academy, which we established in 2006. In 2009 we created the Healthcare e-Academy, and, in partnership with the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, we have created the e-Productives, e-learning materials designed to “Release Time to Care”.An e-Academy is so much more than an LMS, as I noted in an earlier blog post. There are over 400 LMSs on the market today, all offering differing levels of features and functionalities, but very few offer the integrated approach of our Enable LMS, configured to support an e-Academy.Our model is not one of simply developing an e-learning module and moving on, our model is not one of simply deploying an LMS and leaving the client to it. Our model is one of true committed partnership with our clients in developing content and deploying content in our e-Academies. Each e-Academy at Virtual College has a dedicated team offering frontline learner support to deliver a great learning experience and create real learning communities. Our healthcare team regularly run face-to-face events and conferences, often free of charge, to encouraging the coming together and sharing of best practice amongst professionals that operate in this area.At Virtual College our approach is not all about the technology, it is about ensuring the technology is best used to meet the learner’s needs, and delivering the Safe Use of Insulin course by e-learning to over 100,000 learners illustrates how this e-Academy approach really works.By Rod Knox, Virtual college CEO