e-Learning in Health Care
e-Learning has tremendous potential to benefit the information layer of the Health Care Sector and specifically the home health product markets.
Consider the evidence: a few years ago, say 2001, few people knew of a company called Google. In 2005, Google projects that it will generate several billions dollars of revenue. Not thousands of dollars, not millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions of dollars.
But billions of dollars.
The company has done the best job Internet-wide of making information easily and readily accessible.
At a market sector level, health care equipment manufacturers have a similar window of opportunity in 2005/2006 to differentiate themselves from their competition by making educational material – e-Learning – easily and readily accessible to market stakeholders via the Internet.
In this article, we will focus on providing e-Learning to two groups in the market: medical professionals, and customers. The “learning” portion of e-Learning will range from core training, CE and CME credits at the professional level to learning about products and therefore combining product education with a unique marketing opportunity. In either case, all companies have the opportunity to materially improve their image in the eyes of key market players.
The key to the e-Learning potential is that the demand and the infrastructure on the demand side are demonstrable if not overwhelming. Plain and simply, a critical mass of users is using the web to find information about any and all activities pertaining to their lives. This critical mass will only grow in size.
For example, according to Interactive Media Strategies, over 90% of all businesses in the US are connected to the web. Such penetration is on par with utility companies like the phone or electricity. As a result, in the eyes of users, the Internet has moved from novelty to utility.
For medical equipment manufacturers, this means that well designed and developed web-information services are not only good business practice, they are required business practice.
Information based services such as e-Learning (and e-marketing to the customer) lend themselves exceedingly well to the Internet. In addition to the reach and penetration of the web, its connection cost is minimal and its ability to deliver the highest quality interactive content – up to and including video – is unparalleled.
Who Benefits?
1) The Medical Professional - few areas of information services are better suited to the web than Professional Development. The nature and needs of medical education match the strengths of the web almost perfectly. For example, training involves delivering content to many professionals who are often in dispersed locations while the web is an increasingly reliable, powerful, ubiquitous and low cost media.
Historically, such training has been delivered as a luxury service: held in a hotel, delivered around a very nice breakfast and/or lunch, taking the better part of a day, etc.
Such an approach misses the mark for the medical professional. CE and CME credits are a requirement. They are not a luxury; they are a necessity. Web delivery repositions their medical training to so they can get the job done quickly and cost effectively. It allows the professional to take their courses when and where they desire.
The anytime/anywhere nature of e-Learning is not only convenient under normal circumstances; it can be a life saver in emergencies. Consider this situation that arose with a client of one of ScribeStudio’s customers.
Our customer received a call that a nursing home client was found in violation of state regulations relating to pressure ulcers. Fines in excess of $5,000 per day would begin within 3 days time if the nursing staff did not undertake more medical education.
Our customer directed the client to its beta version of their e-Learning program. The nursing home simply paid our customer for their staff to access the e-Learning material and exam. In passing these CE credits, the client solved their problem with the State… all without the time and expense of booking and paying for an instructor, meeting space, and lost productivity!
2) The Customer - Medical Equipment Vendors have a tremendous opportunity to use the Internet to educate their customers. The Pew Charitable Trusts indicate that the percent of seniors who go online has jumped by 47% between 2000 and 2004. In a February 2004 survey, 22% of Americans age 65 or older reported having access to the Internet, up from 15% in 2000. That translates to about 8 million Americans age 65 or older who use the Internet. Those numbers grow for younger demographics: 58% of Americans age 50-64, 75% of 30-49 year-olds, and 77% of 18-29 year-olds currently go online.
In addition to delivering information to where the traffic is, vendors can use the web to coordinate promotion with the delivery of said information. Promotions and discounts can easily tie into a customers’ experience on a vendors’ web site. At the same time, the vendor is reaping additional benefits through enabling the customer to self serve their need for product information. Instead of maintaining a costly customer service center, vendors can cut down on such overhead by enabling do-it-yourself service. In summary, the traffic is online enabling higher revenue potential and lower costs.
But e-Learning is more than simply delivering information and marketing to customers via the Internet. Providing a rich and useful educational resource to customers can help to reinforce a vendor’s market image as a caring and helpful provider of valuable products. As a bonus, the higher levels of interaction and assessment capabilities often included in e-Learning programs can be positioned to unobtrusively collect useful market data – all while offering a significantly more compelling and magnetic experience than mere brochures, product catalogs, and even live presentations.
Do not just sell, but educate, too. Customers suffering from various maladies could learn more about their condition and treatment and be gently led toward choosing a vendor’s products in their treatment – all within the context of legitimately receiving education and assistance. This way, medical equipment vendors could combine e-Learning and marketing for their and their customers’ mutual benefit.
3) The Medical Equipment Vendor - in addition to the customer and stakeholder opportunities mentioned above, the web also enables the small guys to play ball with big players. The key success factors in shaping and delivering information are not scale and size, but rather creativity and relevance. We have already highlighted the well understood fact that web connectivity by and large does not have a cost barrier to entry. As such, small players should keep the following framework in mind to get and stay ahead in e-Learning:
> Focus on an area of e-Learning - vendors can distinguish their product line through e-Learning leadership. The thing to remember is to focus to better ensure doing the program right. Trying to be all things to all stakeholders at once and the risk of being nothing great to everyone is high. If the professional is a key influencer in the purchase process, then focus on CE or CME credit. Set up a critical mass of programs such as the number of credits needed for a full year’s licensure and be the one stop shop. Where you decide to focus should center on where you could most quickly gain a competitive advantage. For some vendors, that area could be in using e-Learning to better train their staff and resellers.
> Define initial budgets - original content is expensive to create. Partner with offline content providers and provide them distribution. Make sure you link and track e-Learning customers - professionals or direct customers - to their ultimate purchase of goods or other services. The software is available and affordable already to do so.
> Have a holistic plan - e-Learning is part of the whole business plan and meant to be both a supplemental service and an investment to benefit your audience of medical professionals, customers, and resellers. It is not the end in itself. Picking up on the budget point above, e-Learning must be properly positioned in relation to the product portfolio and other customer services offered.
Now what?
Get started sooner than later with launching your e-Learning program. The advent of the Internet and web may have helped to level the playing field for vendors of all sizes, but that equality also presents a challenge to further differentiate in an often crowded market. By reaching medical professionals, customers, and other stakeholders via critical and useful education programs, e-Learning could be your competitive advantage.
Peter Cervieri is Director of Business Development for ScribeStudio.com, an easy-to-use e-Learning toolkit for companies that want to author and publish online courses and to manage and communicate with learners online.
Peter Cervieri is co-founder of and Director of Business Development for ScribeMedia.Org. His fetish is collecting business cards.
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