4 Ways EdTech Will Shape Healthcare Education in 2022

Universities and schools providing nursing and medical courses are tying up with technology companies to come up with solutions to upgrade their education format. Some companies, mostly start-ups, have won rounds of funding from benevolent venture capitalists simply for the space in which they are operating – EdTech or Education Technology companies. EdTech companies have forayed into online nursing education and are set to shape healthcare education soon. EdTech companies primarily use artificial intelligence platforms and neural networks to deliver an educative topic in interactive, simulated, easy-to-understand, bite-sized information that a human mind can retain for a longer duration.

Using virtual reality, classes get explanations through examples and simulation. If a child has to be taught parts of the body, a virtual image of different parts is displayed, specifying their specific functions. When the human mind maps the image with the lesson, they tend to retain and recall the information. EdTech companies that specialize in delivering healthcare education are making big bets in this space. These capital-intensive projects are welcomed by academic institutions, the healthcare industry, and the nursing and medical workforce. The wonders of what can be done using artificial intelligence, machine learning, informatics, and neural networking are immense.

The pace of this rapid transformation has changed the dynamics of every industry it has touched. Those who fail to keep pace with this speed of change will be obsolete within a short period. To emphasize, hardly a few years ago, doctors were paged to call them into emergency rooms. Today nurse practitioners and physicians can hold patient consultations without either of them moving from the comfort of their homes or offices. Now let us try to understand in what way this sweeping change will happen and how productive or disruptive it will be for healthcare education. Following are the four ways EdTech will shape Healthcare Education in the near future.

Change from the Pedagogy Model of Healthcare Education

Nursing and med schools have traditionally used teaching labs to impart nursing and medical concepts. They used dead bodies, clinical rotations, and residency programs as the only real-time learning beyond textbook learning. This whole process of traditional education is a necessary bane during times when the actual workload of a hospital partner is increased. The hospital chief nursing head or medical head has to both look at providing a workforce to attend to the sick and even manage the students who are in for practical learning. Ask anyone who has been a shift in charge in a hospital’s nursing or doctor-on-duty, and they will let you know what a nightmare this can be.

EdTech companies will ease the pressure on these healthcare establishments by delivering non-emergency case-related health topics by way of virtual learning methods. The lesson can be explained through simulation models and virtual and augmented reality if a topic deals with an ambulatory patient. The relevant knowledge can be practiced and shared using artificial intelligence.

Additionally, integrating an EMR platform into this educational framework enhances the learning experience by providing real-time data and patient information, essential for a comprehensive understanding of case studies. This integration allows for a seamless transition from theoretical learning to practical application in a clinical setting.

EdTech Companies Ease Shortages of Skilled Nurses and Doctors

EdTech will make the need for a nurse to learn the practicals from clinical rotations and on-job training redundant. This also means that the nursing students will enter the workforce skill-ready and handle their share of operations from day one. Technology will also ease the reskilling and upskilling requirements of the existing nursing and medical workforce. This helps create a workforce that can be relevant to change times and is a boon to the career growth of existing nurses, who otherwise will feel morally down when they cannot keep up with the challenges of the changing dynamics in the healthcare sector.

Create Interest for Students with Varied Abilities

The human mind has always worked best when its image is made to use when learning new concepts. Owing to the difficulty level of the studies, time, and money required for the healthcare education courses like nursing or medicine, many students shy away from applying to these colleges. With the application of AI-based chatbots that act as nursing instructors or study partners, small conversations related to topics in an interactive manner are conducted in apps that can be downloaded on a smartphone.

These chatbots help with spaced interval learning. This means that a nursing student who is in clinical rotations can revise a topic with a chatbot and stop it momentarily if something comes up. These chatbots also help nursing students test their understanding by conducting small tests and auto-correcting their mistakes in real-time. Neural networking can help in grading and giving feedback as and when an assignment or exam is submitted online. The response to feedback given in real-time is productive and more effective as the learners can relate to the mistakes they made. This helps them correct their understanding and deliver better results in their courses and jobs.

Virtual content that is smart, interactive, and engaging through simulations and virtual reality can attract learners to take up challenging professions.

EdTech Changes Educator’s Role to That of Facilitators

Academicians are facilitators who work with the developers of these courses and impart the clinical side of their knowledge that helps develop the course. This makes the healthcare education offered by ed-tech companies relevant and one that is poised to change in the future whenever it needs to be updated. The future of flipped learning methods is not only watching videos and reproducing the learning through assignments via emails. Using neural networking and technology can help educators or teachers see their students’ performance by way of dashboards that give complete, readable infographics. This feature makes nursing educators’ work easy as they can give personalized attention to the students who are doing well.

Though EdTech companies, nursing boards across various states, academic institutions, and student communities have interacted over the years to contemplate the digital transformation of healthcare education, the pandemic created a paradigm shift and a new wave of acceptance of augmenting augmented reality.