By Daksh kapoor on 26 Mar 2021
5 mins read
The demand-supply gap for the Allied Healthcare Workers or Paramedics is largely due to the traditional learning setup. Owing to lack of quality, and affordable training for Paramedics, the traditional healthcare education franchises are facing multiple challenges.
On the training front, key challenges include:
On the scaling front, healthcare education franchises face problems
Many of these challenges can be overcome.
Healthcare is growing over 24% year on year and is the third-largest employer in India. Over 27 million paramedics will need to be trained in healthcare by 2024. Finding the right healthcare education franchise opportunity is key for tapping into this growth. The Government is also focusing on ramping up efforts in this direction. The Government and Private sectors are committed to doubling expenditure on healthcare. Moreover, Budget 2021 referred to the introduction of a National Commission for Allied Healthcare professionals as well.
It is possible and profitable to start a scalable, quality-conscious, healthcare education franchise if one keeps 5 key points in mind.
Often, healthcare education franchises should make an effort to understand the market demand and relevance of a course before offering it to students in a location. It will help to get student enrolments and job placements. Both extensive data and local-level market research are needed to carry out accurate job predictions.
Virohan has a demand algorithm for jobs by geography and trade.
It uses this to supplement local level insights from hospitals and labs. For instance, it identified that there was limited demand for medical imaging technicians in Delhi, which helps its health education franchise partners to avoid making the costly mistake of offering the course. This in turn helps optimize growth and rolls.
Also Read: Scope and Importance of Paramedical Courses
Today, the need of the hour is “industry demand-driven” training.
Industry demand-driven training is more targeted and focused on making a student job-ready in the shortest period of time.
Many healthcare education franchises offer outdated, “supply-driven” training. The traditional supply approach covers topics that may not necessarily be relevant for on-the-job preparedness.
Providing industry demand-driven training will enable students to get jobs faster and easier and generate positive word of mouth and referrals.
Virohan ensures that its content is industry demand-driven.
It has a panel of in-house doctors, which is well versed with the current day job needs of paramedics across hospitals and labs.
Virohan further partners with medical device manufacturers such as GE Healthcare to gain insights and understand industry requirements.
For instance, in addition to technical content, it also provides English Learning and Soft Skills content, which enables Paramedics to connect with patients and their seniors better.
Despite the growing presence of ed-tech and gamified learning, most healthcare education franchises still use blackboards, thick books, and overly academic teachers to get through to students.
However, with dipping student attention rates, difficult to understand medical concepts, and the need for omnichannel flexibility (e-learning) due to lockdowns, the era of the traditional classroom is over.
Virohan conducts classes through its customized Blended Learning approach.
Content is in the form of 3-5 minute short interactive videos and real-time quizzes to check to understand on the spot.
There are in-class activities and energizers. There is also gamification in the form of quiz battles that one can play solo or with a friend.
This optimizes student performance and reduces drop-out rates.
The key USP of Virohan’s Blended Learning platform is that all this can be done without the need of a subject matter expert since the content is already pre-recorded and digitized.
Not all medical experts can prove to be engaging teachers, hence this was the approach to standardize and optimize the quality of education and delivery.
Often healthcare education franchises struggle to break even in a timely manner and maximize returns on investment. This is due to the traditional classroom approach. A regular classroom accommodates only a certain number of students for a 1-year course.
Virohan has changed the game in this area. It accommodates 4 times the number of students in the same space.
Their blended learning teaching method enables a typical class to go faster and smoother, lasting only half the day.
This then can accommodate another batch of students in the evening hours.
Also provides students with the flexibility to choose a morning or evening session based on their personal commitments.
Virohan further believes that practical training is best done in a live environment, on-the-job.
Hence after 6 months of classroom training, Virohan students move on to do a 6-month internship in a hospital/lab. This not only benefits students who get exposure to a live working environment, better preparing them for their healthcare careers, but also optimizes classroom capacity. as another 2 batches can then be accommodated. In this way, a Virohan classroom can handle 4X students in a typical year, compared to a traditional classroom.
Many traditional healthcare education franchises struggle with scaling up. They rely on excel sheets and manual data collection and storage for student mobilization. Challenges are further compounded with manual and inconsistent tracking and monitoring activities of the sales team such as the callers.
This often results in leakages in student leads and suboptimal sales performance.
Virohan has automated its mobilization and sales workflow via apps that enable digitized lead generation and tracking.
The apps are seamless, with data integrating into each other.
Sales activities such as telecalling are tracked and auditable.
The operational advantages are significant and Virohan has trained over 5000 students and grown 3X year on year.
Being recession-proof and catering to a fast-growing market, this is the best time to start your own Health Education Franchise. Just make sure you follow the best practices above. It will be smooth sailing and busy times ahead from thereon.
In case you want to be one of us please contact- Virohan Partner Program You can get through to us at – 9911-131-030
The landscape of healthcare workers in India comprises Doctors (5-10%), Nurses (20-25%) and Allied Healthcare Workers or Paramedics such as OT Technicians, and Lab Technicians.
Despite constituting the largest piece of the pie, is ~10 M in India.
This demand-supply gap is due to the. However, the potential of the healthcare education market, especially focusing on Paramedics, is significant and growing by leaps and bounds.
