Global Health Education
Mobile-first medical education at scale in LMICs
“The Global Health program remains a key resource that we can rely on to effectively educate and engage all levels of HCPs at scale.”
- Global Head Medical Affairs, Global Health and Sustainability, Novartis
Educational Objectives
Mobile-first education reaches HCPs in remote settings
Online medical education often fails to reach HCPs in the difficult-to-penetrate markets of the global South. MedShr’s mobile-first content reaches HCPs – even those in remote settings with limited access to digital platforms – while case-based education engages them, supporting peer-to-peer discussion and learning.
Our client wanted to maximize the impact of medical education to doctors and community healthcare workers, particularly those working within resource-scarce settings, building skills and capacity.
Our Approach
Community focus
To maximize the impact for patients in resource-poor settings, MedShr's Global Health education focused on making mobile-first education accessible to community health workers as well as physicians:
- Family physicians and specialists
- Community health workers and nurses
- Sub-Saharan Africa, LATAM, South Asia
4-Part blended learning
MedShr combined e-learning modules with clinical scenarios and a hub-and-spoke network of discussion groups to help health professionals put knowledge into practice:
- Hub-and-spoke network of mobile-first, online discussion groups
- Educational cases and clinical scenarios
- Collaboration with local organizations
Part 1: Educational needs assessment
We started with research to understand the educational needs in the medical community, particularly in resource-poor settings such as Sub-Saharan Africa where there is a high burden of certain conditions. We decided to focus on eight global health challenges where we felt we had the greatest potential to make an impact through online medical education.
.png "Website images - landscape (3)")
Part 2: Digital forum for doctors and HCPs for each Global Health topic
To enable peer learning, we created a secure online forum on MedShr for each of the areas where we had identified significant educational needs. Accessible on mobile and restricted to verified healthcare professionals, these groups enabled doctors, nurses and community health workers across Sub-Saharan Africa, LATAM and Southeast Asia to connect, share knowledge and reflect on patient cases they had come across.
Part 3: Free, interactive medical education modules
In collaboration with experts across the Global Health topics, MedShr's clinical team developed interactive medical education modules. These were designed to build knowledge around burden of disease, genetics and pathophysiology, diagnosis, appropriate clinical management and emerging therapies. The modules also included test questions with automated marking, and the opportunity for learners to earn CPD credits and formal certification.
Part 4: Educational cases to apply knowledge in clinical practice
To enable doctors, nurses and community health workers to consolidate their knowledge, our team developed a series of clinical cases. The cases provided a short medical history and imaging such as X-rays, and were published in the relevant digital forum on MedShr. Clinicians in the group were invited to review each case, vote anonymously on next steps, add their comments and ask questions. They were also encouraged to reflect on other similar cases they had seen recently and to share those with the group alongside their insights and learnings.
MedShr's medical education programs are tailored, localized, and targeted
Medical Education Case Studies
Neuromuscular:
Society Partnership
MedShr partners with hundreds of national and specialist medical societies to jointly deliver the highest caliber of medical education. To reduce time to diagnosis and accelerate early specialist referral for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), we partnered with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, enabling healthcare professionals from around the world to learn directly from subject matter experts.
Pancreatic Cancer: Insights from KOLs
In pancreatic cancer and other rapidly evolving therapy areas, doctors are faced with an overwhelming amount of data. In this program, we connected oncologists, radiologists and hospitalists in a secure online forum on MedShr to reflect the cases they see in clinical practice. We then invited KOLs to share their insights about the implications of new data on diagnosis and management of patients.
Rare Disease:
Forum for Doctors
With rare diseases, medical education is critical to accelerating diagnosis and referral, and improving patient outcomes.
In this case-based medical education program, pediatricians, nephrologists, endocrinologists and family doctors came together in a digital case discussion forum to share their approaches to challenges in early detection of X-linked hypophosphatemia (XLH).
