Spotlight on: healthcare industry learning trends

Published by Lily Winslow on

Spotlight on: healthcare industry learning trends

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Here at BAD, we create digital learning solutions for healthcare companies from across the globe, some of which, we’ve worked with for nearly 20 years. Working closely with companies like Bupa, Baxter and Abcam allows us an insight into the healthcare industry and what’s important when it comes to learning and development.

Whether we’re developing a personalised LMS landing page, interactive video or immersive digital learning experience, we get under the skin of our healthcare customers, exploring their business needs, strategies and, importantly, understanding their people.

So, what are the latest healthcare industry learning trends? And what does it mean for digital learning?

Compliance is still of the highest importance

We can’t talk about healthcare industry learning trends without mentioning compliance. It’s easy to see why compliance is important to healthcare organisations. No healthcare organisation wants to risk the health of its people or the people it serves. Regulation, policies and procedures are in place to protect patients, customers and colleagues alike.

Adhering to regulation means systems and procedures are in constant review, and that colleague education surrounding compliance topics like data privacy, conflict of interest and mental health is ever evolving. Healthcare organisations are seeking flexible digital learning solutions with robust reporting capabilities.

Fixed regulation requires personalised learning solutions

One of the reasons compliance isn’t as straight forward in the healthcare industries as in others is that policies and procedures can vary wildly by country, job role and level of seniority. For example, for one of our global customers, colleagues that work across states must adhere to different governing bodies depending on the area they work in, many working across more than one. Each governing body has different reporting requirements.

When it comes to learning and development, compliance topics need to be easy for organisations to manage, taking the burden away from manual work and gatekept knowledge, and placing it on automated systems and easy-to-access resources. What’s needed is dynamic learning solutions, personalised to user’s priorities and regulatory requirements – whether they work on the manufacturing room floor, in labs, or in business roles.

A focus on data analytics

The compliance picture is one of the reasons data analytics in learning and development is so important to healthcare organisations. They need surety that the right colleagues have completed the right training in the right way. This has always been the case, but as healthcare companies become more digitally focussed, more is required from their data analytics.

We witnessed this healthcare industry learning trend on a recent project with a healthcare customer where we developed a Conflict of Interest webform that enabled our customer to track completion of the form as well as providing managers oversight of their team members form responses. Our solution significantly reduced reporting time, improved the user experience and saved the business money.

Digital transformation

Increased interest in detailed data analytics follows the trend of digital transformation in the healthcare industry.

The move toward digital processes, systems, and communication continues, with ‘digital’ playing a bigger part in branding and strategy. Internal learning and development teams have shifted their expectations in line with this, recognising the opportunity to utilise this digital momentum and produce future-focussed learning solutions for the modern learner. For some of our customers, the digital learning focus has shifted from ‘make it engaging’ to ‘make it easy to find, quick to complete and simple for us to update’. This ‘self-serve’ approach reflects the changing nature of work, with more people working from home creating less opportunity for face-to-face networking.

A little less “read this policy”, a little more real world behaviours

When we look deeper – at the learning content itself, we’re seeing a shift away from detailed policy-based training and a move toward experiences designed around real-world behaviours. To support this move, healthcare is looking to behavioural science to break down and embed important messages. Some of our healthcare customers have recruited behavioural science experts and teams to support this mission.

We’re excited about this healthcare industry learning trend! At BAD, we place behavioural science at the forefront of everything we do. We use our expertise in understanding complex business issues and bring the disciplines of behavioural science and digital skills to help solve them through affecting people’s behaviour.

We’re delighted to be singing from the same hymn sheet as our healthcare customers.

Flexible solutions

Combine rigorous regulation with digital transformation and the crux of healthcare industry learning trends is revealed: healthcare organisations require flexible digital learning solutions with robust reporting that can be maintained with ease. Things move fast, and when they do move it’s important that L&D teams can update content, and that colleagues can access the latest information quickly and easily.

Find out more about how Abcam, supplier of protein research tools to life scientists, worked with BAD to take their learning management system experience to the next level with a centralised, digital learning space they can easily update themselves.

Some things don’t change. The patient is still at the heart of what our healthcare customers do and why they do it. But the world around us has changed, and to continue to achieve their mission, learning in healthcare is evolving.

Get in touch to find out how we use behavioural science to deliver engaging, measurable digital learning experiences in the healthcare industry.

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