The Health Service Executive (HSE) in Ireland delivers health and social services across the country. To provide better integrated care while reducing costs, the HSE implemented an online learning system called hseland.ie using the NetDimensions Learning platform. The system provides eLearning programs and resources to over 53,000 healthcare workers. It allows staff to complete training flexibly without disrupting patient care. Hseland.ie has helped the HSE respond quickly to emergencies and transform its approach to collaborative, online learning.

1. “NetDimensions Learning is the engine…it’s in the
background…. we can forget about it and focus on the
business of learning…..it allows us to focus on education
and transform learning and development within the HSE.”
- Pat Kenny, National eLearning Services Manager, HSE
Customer Success Story
The HSE’s secret to successful
integrated health care
Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) delivers a vast range of
health and social services in hospitals, clinics and communities
across Ireland. Like all organisations involved in health care
today, the HSE faces the challenge of providing the best possible
care, while simultaneously decreasing costs. To do so the HSE
has embraced ‘integrated health care’ - an interdisciplinary
approach characterised by a high degree of collaboration and
communication among different health professionals that aims
to improve both patients’ outcomes and satisfaction.
But for an integrated health care scheme to be truly effective,
knowledge gaps must be quickly identified and eliminated –
and this is why the hseland.ie team wanted to create an online
learning and development portal, that would do so much more
than just deliver learning.
Challenges and delivery
Online learning needs
hseland.ie delivers high quality training programmes for HSE’s
health care workers. However, achieving this in an active health
care environment is no easy matter. While classroom training can
address knowledge shortfalls, scheduling classes is tricky because
of workers’ demanding schedules. Moreover, when health
care professionals go away to attend classes, they are in effect
spending less time attending to busy wards, clinics, or their other
duties. Online learning, which does not have the same physical
constraints as classroom training, enables learners to take
training at their convenience and thus became a more attractive
alternative to classroom education for HSE.
System objectives
In designing their online learning system, and working closely
with existing learning and development colleagues, the
hseland.ie team expended significant effort in engaging
staff across all areas of the health services spectrum; no easy
undertaking given the 96,000 health care workers who are
dispersed over a wide geographic area. At the same time, there
was considerable external pressure to get the system up and
running — Ireland’s population was growing and aging and
not only were the number of demands on HSE staff rising, but
the HSE staff also found they had to become competent in a
growing number of different areas.
Nevertheless, the organisation did not compromise on its
standards. Pat Kenny, the HSE’s National eLearning Services
Manager remarked, “The HSE’s key requirements for a
technology solution were reliability and robustness. We
essentially wanted a solution that we could forget about – that
we wouldn’t have to worry about so that we could get on with
the business of delivering learning and development to our
colleagues. ”
“We also wanted a cost-efficient solution that could be scaled
across the organisation.”
After completing a full requirements analysis, the HSE concluded
the ideal online learning system would need to:
„„ Deliver a range of custom and off-the-shelf eLearning
programmes;
„„ Be flexible, incorporating new technologies where
appropriate and providing a suite of learning &
development resources;
„„ Enable in-house staff to design and deliver their own
eLearning material for distribution through the system;
„„ Allow a wide range of users, including HSE employees,
health care organisations, and voluntary sector
organisations access to the system;
„„ Incorporate an effective assessment mechanism for quick
identification of knowledge gaps; and
„„ Provide a set of career progression tools.
Most importantly, employees needed to feel comfortable using
the system for continuing professional development, which
meant it had to be user friendly, easy to navigate and provide
24/7 availability.

2. www.NetDimensions.com • Sales@NetDimensions.com
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referenced herein belong to their respective owners.
HSELanD.ie
53,783 registrants • 18,651 eLearning programmes completed • 19,267 eLearning programmes in progress •
5,000 competency assessments
authorized NETDIMENSIONS reseller
Following a competitive tendering process, the HSE chose
NetDimensions Learning and worked with Aurion Learning (a
NetDimensions reseller) to deploy the system on time and on
budget.
The results
A reference learning platform
Now recognised as the platform of choice for the roll out of
training programmes that must be readily available throughout
the Irish health care sector, hseland.ie has over 53,783
registrants, 19,267 e-learning programmes in progress, more
than 18,651 eLearning programmes completed and over 5,000
completed competency assessments.
hseland.ie is now able to provide users with a comprehensive set
of functions that allows them to:
„„ Carry out competency assessments;
„„ Plan professional development for the coming year;
„„ Complete mandatory eLearning programmes on demand
(i.e. learning what they want, when they want);
„„ Print certificates of achievement when they successfully
complete an eLearning course to evidence their
having completed professional development;
„„ Access libraries of learning resources
including documents, videos, and links;
„„ Participate in or contribute to subject specific
collaborative learning hubs, forums, wikis, and blogs; and
„„ Manage their individual learning paths.
Health care workers can access eLearning programmes
that cover a wide range of skills, for example clinical skills,
management and team working skills, computer skills and
personal effectiveness skills. Titles include: Disability Awareness,
Safer Manual Handling, Clinical Audit, Peripheral Venepuncture
and Cannulation and Medications Management.
Making use of the system’s convenience, many staff now choose
to complete training in the evening or outside working hours
(e.g. the most popular times are evening and very early morning
before shifts typically start) thereby minimising both disruption to
ward operations and the need for replacement staff.
Thanks to hseland.ie, the HSE can now respond to urgent
matters with unprecedented speed and efficacy as illustrated by
its response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic – within eight weeks
a programme providing vital training for all health care workers
on H1N1 was developed and released. Over 2,000 staff accessed
the H1N1 program two weeks after it had been made available.
A catalyst for organisational cultural change
The provision of high quality online learning has significantly
enriched learning and development provision throughout
Ireland’s health services.
hseland.ie has been key in supporting the HSE successfully
migrate the focus of training and development from traditional
face-to-face training to blended and online learning. And in
cases where face-to-face training remains essential, learning
and development teams can upload complementary learning
resources to hseland.ie to enhance the learning experience.
hseland.ie has also paved the way for more collaborative
learning across the health services. Today, a number of mental
health, voluntary organisations and independent hospitals are
actively working with hseland.ie to develop their own eLearning
resources that will be shared across the Irish Health Services.
Working with Aurion Learning, the hseland.ie team have created
a number of collaborative learning hubs to facilitate knowledge
sharing between multidisciplinary groups spread over a wide
geographical area. Examples include The Change Hub which
provides practical tools for managing change across the HSE,
and the Medical Education and Training Hub which supports
the Government and the HSE goals for medical training at
undergraduate, intern, specialist and continuing professional
development levels.
The future
The hseland.ie team continues to identify the best developments
in online learning technology to enhance teaching capacity,
incorporating the use of real-life scenario based eLearning
programmes as well as interactive learning videos to deliver
engaging and relevant learning experiences to learners across
Ireland’s health services.
“NetDimensions Learning is the engine…it’s in the
background…. we can forget about it and focus on the business
of learning…..it allows us to focus on education and transform
learning and development within the HSE.”
Pat Kenny, National eLearning Services Manager, HSE