MOOC on quality management

The Quality Management MOOC*: Innovative training for everyone, everywhere and at your own pace

*Massive Open Online Course

In October 2024, the Mérieux Foundation launched its fourth MOOC on “Quality management in medical biology laboratories”. Over 5,000 students and professionals around the world signed up!

Numerous training courses are organized annually by the Mérieux Foundation to strengthen the skills of laboratory staff. These face-to-face training courses are highly popular, but are only available for a limited number of people.

A set of videos on quality and laboratory management is also freely available on the YouTube channel. While these videos can be seen by a great number of people, they are not part of a training scheme to help people acquire knowledge and skills.

Concepts and requirements for building an effective QMS

In order to respond to the massive demand for training, particularly in developing countries, we have had to consider new solutions. In this context, the MOOC format has enabled us to respond to this problem by offering a large number of participants a regular training course.

In partnership with AFNOR and the Pasteur Institute, the Mérieux Foundation’s MOOC offers 3 different courses:

• a free “customizable” course, aimed at participants who simply wish to access resources and take part in certain activities without aiming for attestation or certification.
• a knowledge path leading to a badge: “playing a part in the quality initiative”, which validates the theoretical knowledge acquired.
• a skills path to acquire technical and practice-oriented competences through a skills certificate: “being responsible for the quality initiative”.

The diversity of the educational content and the course units aim to provide a macroscopic, complete and clear vision of the deployment of a quality initiative in the laboratory. From session 1 to 5, MOOC participants can discover the requirements of the ISO 15189 standard as part of a process-based approach, focusing on the professions and laboratory support processes.

In addition to introducing the general issues and concepts, the aim is to give a practical interpretation of the standard and the tools and methods available for quality managers, and for other key positions, for the day-to-day implementation of their quality management system.

• Session 1: Quality in medical laboratories
• Session 2: Compliance of medical laboratory work processes
• Session 3: Compliance of support processes
• Session 4: Quality Management System
• Session 5: Development and assessment of the management system

By the end of the session of this MOOC, from October to December 2019, the number of people considering their level of knowledge as “Advanced” had quadrupled*. The training is therefore thought to have led to an increase in skills.

*According to the start and end surveys provided by the France Université Numérique platform.

In parallel with this MOOC, a community based around Quality was created on Linkedin and through the discussion forum. To date, it has over 1,200 members. This group shows that there is a real desire to bring laboratory staff together on a global scale to share this common theme. The objective is to enable members to talk about the obstacles they encounter, and above all to share best practice.

In addition to providing training, the Quality MOOC has a broader vocation which is to launch a movement based around quality as a vector for improving access to diagnosis based on reliable laboratory results.

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To complement the training activities, YouTube Lives were organized to create links and interactions between the learners and the training team.