According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), “The Indian pharma industry has been growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 15% over the last five years and has significant growth opportunities. However, for the industry to sustain this robust growth rate till 2020, companies will have to rethink their business strategy.” Healthcare companies can no longer sustain growth only by discovering, producing, and selling new medications and medical devices. In addition to discovering new pharmaceutical drugs, they need to focus on upskilling and reskilling employees regularly. They cannot train a large and diverse workforce using conventional learning methods. Most pharma companies these days implement eLearning to train a large number of employees quickly and effortlessly across geographies. They leverage learning management systems to run online training programs for internal and external learners from various departments – sales, quality assurance (QA), and research and development (R&D). They invest in Multi-language LMS systems to train learners in their native language. Also, they avail of the features provided by new-age LMSs to personalize the learning experience and boost learner engagement. We can assess the importance of the LMS for healthcare and pharma industry based on some interesting use cases. 8 Interesting Use Cases of LMS for Healthcare and Pharma Industry Training Mobile Salespeople The marketing professionals and salespeople in the healthcare industry spend most of their time meeting physicians and pharmacists. They need updated information to impress the doctors and pharmacists during the meetings. However, they often lack the time to update their knowledge in a conventional learning environment. The pharma companies use LMS to enable salespeople to access updated information using their mobile devices regardless of their current locations. They further make it easier for salespeople to acquire knowledge by implementing micro training or microlearning. Microlearning makes learners acquire knowledge by studying short bursts of content at a time. Creating Online Courses Rapidly A patent in the healthcare industry lapses legally in about five years. Hence, learning managers have to create online courses frequently. The new-age LMSs are designed with robust authoring tools that enable learning managers to create online courses rapidly. The learning managers can further create courses by combining a variety of digital content – ebooks, PDFs, audiobooks, videos, podcasts, infographics, and quizzes. The learning managers also have the option to allow employees to access ready-to-use content from leading publishers by integrating the LMS with digital libraries. Keeping the Training Materials Up-to-Date Unlike other enterprises, healthcare companies need to update the training materials frequently. They need to ensure that each employee knows the latest information and industry changes. The LMSs allow healthcare companies to store and manage online training materials from a centralized location. Hence, the learning managers and instructors can update and modify the training materials in a few minutes. Also, they can ensure that employees understand and use updated information by designing retraining programs. Providing Compliance Training to Every Employee Healthcare companies have to adhere to a set of globally accepted standards while designing processed and producing drugs. They need to ensure that every employee completes mandatory training programs like Quality Systems and Controls, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP), and Ethical Business Practices. The pharma companies can use a single LMS to provide mandatory compliance training to each employee. Also, they can train a large number of employees across geographic locations simultaneously without deploying extra instructors. Driving Sales of New Medication Like other businesses, pharma companies extend their product portfolios regularly. They conduct R&D continuously to discover and produce new medications, pharmaceutical drugs, and vaccines. In addition to producing new drugs, the healthcare companies must help the salespeople to create demand for the new medication. Pharma and healthcare companies use LMS to share elaborate information about the new medication with salespeople by combining microlearning and gamification features. The LMS for the pharma industry makes it easier for salespeople to acquire product knowledge quickly just before the product launches. The learning managers can launch relevant courses according to the scheduled product launch. Launching Free Courses for Customers The LMSs help healthcare companies design and run multiple training programs without investing extra time and resources. Many healthcare companies these days leverage LMSs to launch a number of courses for customers. Interested customers can join the online courses to acquire knowledge about various products and processes in the pharma companies. The pharma companies further allow interested customers to join the online training programs free of cost. The free training programs help pharma companies to boost customer experience and promote customer loyalty. Automate Record Keeping and Audit Trail healthcare industry is one of the highly regulated sectors. The government regulations related to specific medications and pharmaceutical drugs change from time to time. Healthcare companies need to ensure that each employee understands the regulation changes. At the same time, they have to maintain records and keep in place an audit trail. In addition to providing compliance training to employees, LMSs help managers record and document employee training, compliance training, and certifications without any human interventions. Automate Administrative Activities The conventional learning methods require healthcare companies to deploy additional staff to perform administrative activities. However, the LMSs enable healthcare companies to automate routine administrative activities. While configuring the LMS, the administrators simply need to divide the learners into multiple groups based on their roles. They can further make every learner access the relevant training materials based on his predefined role. Once the administrator assigns a learner to a specific group, the LMS will inform him about the course and training programs by sending automated alerts or messages. The tailor-made LMS system developed by Mintobook helps healthcare companies train a large number of internal and external learners across geographies. In addition to supporting multiple languages, the LMS allows healthcare companies to integrate instructor-led training and self-face learning seamlessly. Healthcare companies can further use the LMS to design multiple training programs and create online training materials without investing extra time and resources.