The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) is a bilingual academic health network. It is affiliated with McGill University and is one of the largest and most modern medical complexes in North America.
MUHC are a community of 14,405 people including physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals; as well as researchers, investigators, students, various other professionals and volunteers.
MUHC Mission
“As a leading, bilingual academic health centre for people of all ages, we work in collaboration with our diverse patients, families, and local and global partners to continually challenge the status quo through the integration of world-class care, cutting-edge research, exceptional learning opportunities, and rigorous evaluation.” Source
MUHC Moodle Project Purpose
MUHC recognises the importance of providing continuous learning for their members, as well as the role of digital transformation, in their ongoing success. MUHC is specifically mandated by the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services to administer the learning platform for health workers of the province of Quebec.
Key Needs and Challenges
The McGill University Health Centre’s ENA (Environnement Numérique d’Apprentissage – Online Learning Environment) project aims to provide continuing education for health care workers across Quebec.
In 2020 and 2021, with the disruptions caused by the COVID Pandemic, a series of new training materials had to be launched. The training was based largely around the COVID vaccinations and had to cover a wide range of stakeholders – all those involved in the process of vaccination clinics. The training also had to be adjusted to various specific health establishments.
Some of these training activities, such as the right hygiene procedures to follow, also had to be available to the province residents.
To deliver on their goals, the MUHC team needed to upgrade and improve performance of their existing Moodle site, as well as migrate it into a safe, scalable and resilient infrastructure.
In addition, a stronger authentication process was required to protect the organisation and all platform users from any potential cyber risks.
Findings and Solutions
Catalyst IT worked closely with MUHC to perform a Moodle site upgrade from the existing to the newer version. Catalyst also successfully migrated the site to their environment on the AWS Cloud – automated and orchestrated, and fully managed and monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by the global Catalyst Follow the Sun support team.
The upgrade included a full review of the site plugins, including depreciation, replacement and decommissioning of plugins as required.
Catalyst had also performed load testing and analysis of the site and implemented performance improvements along the way as required.
The team at Catalyst have also produced a highly customised login page for MUHC users and implemented Google and Microsoft Authorisation features.
Results
Notable results in this MUHC and Catalyst Moodle implementation project included:
- Getting a new site available in just a few weeks
- Delivering a Moodle site that could support hundreds of simultaneous connections to training without affecting performance
- Improving user experience
- Enhancing security by offering a secure, dedicated infrastructure and by solving authentication issues
- Making sure the service is uninterrupted at all times
In addition to achieving desired results, Catalyst has provided a high level of support and advice during the implementation and migration phases, making the process seamless.
We chose to work with Catalyst because they are a local team and a Premium Moodle Partner which makes a real difference in our everyday job. Any issue raised was properly analyzed and fixed promptly. This helped us in providing a good and stable user experience to our end-users. Being efficient in delivering a solution during a time of crisis, fostered trust with our institutional stakeholders.
*Banner image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGill_University_Health_Centre
