LearnWright And Plateau Systems Partner To Provide Validated Hosted ASP Training Offering For Pharmaceutical Companies Worldwide
Today, life sciences companies that deploy a training solution must undergo a stringent validation process mandated by regulatory agencies. This process can take months and cost up to 50 percent of the training solution itself. LearnWright and Plateau will eliminate this costly process for companies with non-customized training requirements by delivering a pre-validated application service provider (ASP) offering for training.
Training is crucial to meeting the global regulatory requirements and developing talent within the fast-growing life sciences industry. Plateau's comprehensive LMS will serve as the backbone to PharmaTrain, providing organizations with a single source for scheduling, managing and tracking training activities. Plateau will be pre-configured to meet the specific workflow and training needs of biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical and blood-products companies, and will come pre-loaded with LearnWright's rich courseware. Offered as an ASP service that has already been validated, the joint solution will provide life sciences companies with an excellent option to meet either departmental or organization-wide training needs.
Plateau is an established leader within the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device manufacturing industries. Over two dozen leading companies in these industries are currently using the Plateau system to train and assess employees and to manage electronic training documents. Plateau's extensive audit trail, secure electronic signature, document tracking and configuration management features, as well as its standards-based protocols for qualification and validation, have enabled its customers to meet the FDA's rigorous 21 CFR Part 11 and GMP requirements for training.
LearnWright's Web-based, multimedia courses mix video, audio and interactive components and include innovative assessments (or tests) so students can demonstrate that they have learned the content and met the learning objectives. LearnWright's courseware is being used by pharmaceutical, active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and blood-products firms around the world. The course modules are tightly integrated with Plateau's LMS for easy reporting to program administrators and management. LearnWright's courses have been developed by a team of instructional designers, pharmaceutical industry training professionals, skilled graphic designers and computer engineers and address GMP regulations and requirements in the United States, Canada and Europe.
"Training is one of the most important things a company can do to equip its workforce to meet the technical, business and regulatory challenges it faces," said Paul Sparta, chairman and CEO of Plateau Systems. "Managing and optimizing training - getting the right information to the right people at the right time - is critical. By partnering with LearnWright to develop a fully validated, hosted solution for learning and content delivery, we are making it much easier and more cost effective for smaller, rapidly growing biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical and blood-products companies to adopt a world-class training solution."
"The priority of training within our industry is critical to ensure compliance with evolving global regulatory expectations," said LearnWright President and CEO Frank Taylor. "Regulatory agencies, like the FDA, have said that training is one of the underlying causes of many of the problems they find. Firms now have an option of using a cost-effective ASP model that removes many of the tasks and challenges required in operating their own LMS. We have established systems for qualification, validation and change control in our installation of Plateau so our clients can focus their energy on what they are best at - developing and producing high-quality pharmaceutical products."
"When we were looking for a learning management system to be the backbone of PharmaTrain, we wanted the LMS that was best suited for our regulated industry," said Taylor. "Plateau's scalability, security and multi-language interface are just a couple of the reasons we believe Plateau's LMS is the best platform for our ASP industry solution. We also wanted to partner with Plateau because it is a firm that we and other leaders in our industry have confidence in due to its strong track record of customer success. Together, we will provide a product that is unique, exciting and very much needed."
Availability: PharmaTrain is scheduled for commercial release in August 2005.