-Neil Hammond
Background
Originally, back in early 2024, Learnbase partnered with BC Children’s Hospital to further develop and deploy their ‘post LMS’ online learning solution that Learnbase has deployed for a another Provincial Health Service Authority. Over the first year Learnbase worked closely with the BC Children’s Specialty Nurse Education Program leader to adapt and produce the first of several extensive nurse education programs.
What began as a single program site quickly grew in scope, as additional nursing, clinical, and allied health programs sought similar solutions.
This expansion revealed the need for a more strategic approach: rather than developing separate, complex single-program sites that would be difficult to maintain, Learnbase and the BC Children’s and Women’s learning leadership team envisioned a unified platform that could host multiple programs while remaining scalable, secure, and easy to manage.
Challenge
Healthcare education programs were approaching with requests for their own individual learning sites. While each solved a local problem, the overall effect risked replicating a familiar system-level issue:
- Multiple disconnected sites, each with their own logins, UI and admin architectures
- Rising costs for setup and maintenance.
- Decreasing ability for teams to manage sites over time.
- Risk of outdated, insecure platforms.
The challenge was to create a single platform architecture capable of serving very different programs, each with unique sets of competencies, learning pathways, and group management requirements, all without disrupting ongoing education services.
Our Solution
Learnbase designed and delivered a complete rebuild of the underlying platform architecture, enabling concurrent use by multiple programs while maintaining high performance and ease of use. Key innovations included:
- Dynamic program architecture allowing each program to define and deliver distinct competency frameworks and self-assessment tools without affecting site performance and speed.
- Advanced migration scripts to move all user data, courses, badges, certificates, competencies, plans, and favourites with no service interruption.
- New enhanced features and functionality drawn from other Learnbase projects, including:
- Cost efficiencies making it faster and more affordable to onboard new programs.
As one stakeholder described it, the process was like “expanding the seating space and retooling the engine of a bus while driving down the road, without the passengers noticing.”
Results
The unified platform now allows multiple nursing, clinician, and allied health programs to operate side by side within a single site, each with tailored competency frameworks and learning pathways. Migration to the new architecture was seamless, with no disruption for learners or administrators, and all user data, courses, badges, and plans carried forward without interruption. Learners benefit from interactive features, cross-program navigation, and streamlined pathways that make the experience modern and intuitive.
The rebuild also created long-term sustainability by reducing setup costs, simplifying maintenance, and avoiding the risks associated with siloed systems. By consolidating programs into a single, high-performance site, the project established a stable foundation for continued growth and innovation in clinical education at BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital.
