Medical device and equipment providers have a huge training challenge on their hands:
Educate practitioners, healthcare professionals and end-users to make the best use of devices whilst also securing customer loyalty, retention and brand advocacy.
In this post, you’ll learn from real-world examples and case studies revealing how medical device organizations have increased sales, reduced costs and improved compliance with well-structured medical device training programs.
Sinclair Pharma trains a global audience of 10,000 aesthetic physicians
Sinclair Pharma is an aesthetics company providing physicians around the world with products used in high-quality, natural-looking and minimally invasive cosmetic treatments.
The company operates in Western Europe, the US, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil, and via distributors in Asia, North America, Latin America and the Middle East.
The challenge
In 2017, having realized the difficulty in training physicians in some parts of the world directly, Sinclair Pharma created a basic WordPress website to deliver video training.
While not equipped to deliver the high-quality learning experiences the company wanted for its physicians, the website at least demonstrated the potential for an e-learning platform to work successfully.
A year later, they approached Totara Partner Synergy Learning to develop a medical device training learning management system that would:
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Present adaptive learning journeys based on each physician’s interests, knowledge and experience
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Provide better measurement and reporting on the participation of individual learners
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Improve user experience to optimize training experiences for physicians
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Offer multilingual training to cater to learners around the world
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Provide a platform for prospecting and promoting
The solution
Synergy Learning worked with Sinclair Pharma to create Sinclair College, an e-learning platform that is pioneering within a sector still heavily reliant on face-to-face sales and training.
Using the Totara Learn LMS, Synergy Learning designed a user interface and user experience that makes it far easier for aesthetic physicians to get the information they need.
The LMS includes on-demand videos delivering training on products, anatomy, combined treatments and practice support, along with webinars allowing physicians to participate in peer-to-peer training.
It also supports programs guiding learners from basic training through to advanced techniques on the application of each product.
A tagging system provides intuitive training pathways, ensuring that physicians engage in training suited to their level of experience and knowledge, as well as their professional interests or specialisms.
More than 10,000 aesthetic physicians are now registered to learn about Sinclair Pharma’s products via Sinclair College.
“Our platform has been very well received and we have seen a huge number of physicians going onto our LMS to learn about our products. It would have been very difficult to keep in contact with them without our LMS. We are very proud of the platform, which has proven to be a very efficient way to train and stay in touch with physicians in markets around the world.” —Virginie Cheguillaume, Head of e-Education, Sinclair Pharma
The limitations of the previous website make it impossible to be precise about the number of physicians who used it, but the new LMS has resulted in a significant increase in the number of learners engaging with Sinclair Pharma’s e-learning content.
Thanks to multiple translated versions of the LMS, each physician is able to learn in a language of their choosing, improving completion rates and overall satisfaction with the LMS.
The platform has received glowing feedback from physicians who, despite not always being the most computer-literate of learners, are now able to access the information they need more easily, and are guided through relevant training.
Read more about Sinclair Pharma’s medical device training success.
Wassenburg Medical drives international growth by digitalizing the learning process
Wassenburg Medical is a leading company delivering products and solutions for the cleaning and disinfection of endoscopes.
With its head office in the Netherlands, sales offices in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, France and Germany, and an exclusive distribution network in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and Africa, the role of Wassenburg Medical in the world market is rapidly expanding.
The challenge
Wassenburg previously had an outdated, paper-based onboarding process, where new employees were told on paper which classroom training they had to take.
Not everyone came to these introductory sessions, meaning they missed important onboarding information. With the help of Netherlands-based Totara Partner, The Courseware Company, Wassenburg was empowered to develop its own e-learning modules with the Articulate 360 authoring tool.
After staff received initial training on the product portfolio in the head office in the Netherlands, they also needed training on the product updates.
Since it is not possible to have account managers and engineers from all over the world come to Dodewaard all the time, they opted to deliver learning to their geographically dispersed audience with an LMS.
In addition, the training department had a lot of administrative work. All information was stored in a database that not everyone could see. As a result, employees could not see their own training status, creating a lot of administration requests.
Understandbly, Wassenburg wanted to further digitalize this process and make it accessible to everyone.
The solution
With their new Totara Learn-powered medical device training platform, Wassenburg was able to streamline the administration process and make training more accessible via online modules.
Additionally, Wassenburg has developed modules for emergency response and product information, as well as a module for the introduction of a new CRM system.
About 200 engineers and account managers in 35 countries now use Totara Learn. Prior to Totara Learn, information was sent to international employees via email as a PDF attachment.
With the arrival of their new LMS, Wassenburg has more control over the information people receive. Furthermore, Wassenburg has now managed to certify everyone in the field, which is vital for anyone working for them.
They can now manage the certification process much more conveniently via their LMS.
Read more about Wassenburg’s medical device training success.
Ziehm Imaging moves to an efficiency-boosting hybrid learning program
Ziehm Imaging is a leading specialist in the creation of mobile x-ray systems for intra-operative use. They deliver a range of innovative C-arm systems focused on physicians’ needs and the care of patients.
The challenge
Each year, distributors of Ziehm Imaging’s mobile x-ray machines from all over the world visit the Ziehm Imaging headquarters in Germany for several weeks at a time.
They attend training sessions to help them better understand the products they are selling, and distributors operating in remote regions may also need to know how to carry out repair work or maintenance on the complex mobile imaging systems.
However, these distributors often wished that there was more time to carry out practical exercises in these face-to-face training sessions, so Ziehm Imaging needed a new solution.
In addition to that, there was no scalable solution for systematic documentation of the competencies and educational levels of Ziehm Imaging employees.
This posed a significant challenge in the compliance-heavy healthcare sector, especially with regulatory requirements differing across target markets.
The solution
Working with Totara Partner LearnChamp, Ziehm Imaging created a better way of delivering medical device training to overseas distributors.
While some elements of the onsite training needed to remain, LearnChamp and Ziehm Imaging quickly identified the potential to move some parts of the learning online. LearnChamp worked to convert some of the theoretical training into e-learning, made available via Totara Learn for course participants.
These e-learning modules are compulsory, and must be taken before the onsite training to leave more time for practical exercises and questions during the face-to-face sessions. The LMS also has two separate views; one for interactive learning modules for distributors, and the other for internal training.
For the internal training, Ziehm Imaging bought over 100 courses on rhetoric skills, computer programs and compliance topics, as well as content they’re creating themselves. With some customization, they were also able to manage and track their employees’ formal learning within one system.
Totara Learn allows Ziehm Imaging to manage face-to-face training through the LMS itself, which they find very useful as very few other tools support this by default. As well as the face-to-face training, LearnChamp created many add-ons to tailor the LMS to suit the Ziehm Imaging’s unique needs.
Read more about Ziehm Imaging’s medical device training success.
