The Pharmaceutical Institute Launches Online Biopharmaceutical Training Program

Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies seeking to train employees, or even to create their own “online university” can now partner with The Pharmaceutical Institute (PI) of Raleigh, NC (www.pharmainstitute.com). PI, a subsidiary of the consulting firm Campbell Alliance, launched its “Corporate Academy Program” in June. The program allows industry clients to implement a training infrastructure without having to set up their own learning management system (LMS).
    
“We realized there are a lot of small companies or work groups within large companies that have an interest in training, but they don’t have the resources to commit to evaluating, purchasing, and implementing an LMS, maintaining that system, developing new content, or going out and surveying the universe of available content and keep it running for their employees,” said Dan Blue, executive director of PI. “We can set it all up for them with a turn-key solution that allows users to get up and running fairly quickly.”

Clients have the option of using their own proprietary educational material, using PI’s resources, using material licensed by PI from outside vendors, or any combination of all three to customize an educational program for employees.

Services available include:

• Educational content on a variety of subjects, including business processes, therapeutic areas, and management training.
  

• An online learning environment, which allows participants to access course materials and record test results. This system also allows managers to track which courses participants have taken.
  

• Custom course development, in which PI works with the client to create new courses or new materials that capture pre-existing company educational data as well as material supplied by PI.
  

• Program management and support, including program implementation, maintenance, initial setup and loading of users, addition and deletion of users on a monthly basis, and technical support.

Although the system originally was designed for small- to mid-size companies, Craig Dunkley, vice president of marketing for Campbell Alliance, says the program’s flexibility also makes it suitable for work groups within large corporations. “If individual work groups within [a large pharmaceutical] company come to us and want to work on developing a corporate academy, we’re certainly happy to do that,” he said.

Cost to the client for participating in the Corporate Academy Program is determined by the number of participants and the amount of educational content, per the terms of each individual agreement.

                                      –Pam Holland-Moritz