NHS R-ITI Project

After a world-wide LCMS evaluation at the start of 2005, Giunti Labs’ learn eXact LCMS platform was selected as the Learning Content Management solution for the R-ITI Project (Radiology – Integrated Training Initiative), a collaborative initiative between the Royal College of Radiologists, the Department of Health and the NHS (UK National Health Service). R-ITI was established to create Innovative ways to improve the training of junior radiologists in the UK health system.

The R-ITI Project was initiated to contribute towards the target of reducing radiology-based diagnosis time to 14 weeks from the average 2 years currently experienced by patients who enter the National Health Service. The Current radiology training infrastructure in the UK cannot support a large and rapid increase in the number of trainees, and therefore the R-ITI project was initiated to develop a new approach to training radiologists, which can increase the numbers of qualified radiologists without putting additional strain on the current training infrastructure.

learn eXact was selected as the solution capable of achieving the targets without reducing the high quality standards this scientific content requires and the rigorous workflow management such learning material production requires.

Solution

The combination of a simple, templated development environment, with a shared development repository and comprehensive workflow management provided the best match to the development requirements of the project. With the need to engage over 350 subject matter experts throughout the UK and abroad and provide them with a toolset that allowed their own development and review of content; the ability to ‘tailor’ the templated environment quickly and simply was an essential need to ensure both a simple development platform as well as ensuring consistency in the content
that is developed. The selection of learn eXact has proved to be justified in production levels of that are delivering 20 hours of complex medical content a month, from a development team of 20 instructional designers and content engineers.

Achievements

To date, R-ITI content engineers have produced more than 1000 hours of eLearning content in collaboration with over 350 subject matter experts, using learn eXact advanced content authoring, distributed workflow and peer reviewing functionality.

They have achieved a 10:1 reduction in content production costs when compared to the NHS’ “traditional” outsourcing models. During next project phase, learn eXact LCMS will be installed into three eLearning Content Production centers in Leeds, Plymouth and Norwich to serve the full UK NHS system across the NHSnet broadband backbone.

The success of the new development approach and learn eXact has been recognised in the other professional colleges in the UK. Specific interest in using the R-ITI approach and platform has come from Anaesthetists, Ultrasound experts, Radiographers, Surgeons and Oncologists. In addition, the platform and development environment is supporting the development of national radiology guidelines, as part of a National Libraries for Health initiative, and providing a sub-set of content to support Foundation Year (post medical school graduation) learning.