Coursera partners with 15 universities to meet the growing demand of healthcare workers
Coursera has affiliated with 15 universities to develop a range of health-related online courses in order to address the problem of worldwide shortage of skilled health workers.
Recently, MOOC (massive open online course) provider Coursera announced that it is affiliating with 15 universities to introduce a set of healthcare content on its online educational platform. The new content takes account of 100 courses, 30 specializations and two Master’s degree in public health that are intended to meet the rising demand for healthcare workforces.
The partnering colleges of Mountain View, CA.-based Coursera comprise a wide range of public and private institutions, together with Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, Northeastern University, Emory University, and the University of Colorado system. In an announcement, Coursera said that the two master’s degrees are in association with Imperial College London and the University of Michigan.
Specializations focusing on Population Health Management, Biostatistics, Social Welfare Policy, and Nursing Informatics have been planned to develop or add more to healthcare workers’ knowledge and awareness and to help others make a career in the industry.
Amongst the professions, the training targets are informatics nurse specialists, bioinformatics scientists, clinical analysts, community health coordinators, and hospital administrators.
In a prepared statement, Dean F. DuBois Bowman of the University of Michigan School of Public Health said that the world’s most persistent health concerns need interdisciplinary, population-based plans and preparation. His university is working with Coursera to create an incorporated online Masters of Public Health degree course.
He further said that the public health industry is set to enjoy the benefit that will come from increased access to prominent training opportunities, specifically for grownups who cannot take part in round-the-clock residential programs.
Why it matters?
This new healthcare education platform has been designed to deal with two main problems. First is the ageing population of U.S. that are in need of more healthcare and second is a lack of workforces to provide those healthcare services.
Healthcare is among the fastest developing industries in the U.S. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that around 2.3 million jobs will be generated by 2026. Nevertheless, as per a recent report from Mercer, in many states, there won’t be enough number of workers to fulfil the rise in demand.
In an email reply to Campus Technology, Daphne Kohler, the co-founder of Coursera, said that even though earlier, the company had a few widely held courses and specializations in healthcare, the subject area was rather dispersed. She also said that the partnership with other universities is a well-coordinated effort, where a large amount of the content is completely new.
Coursera has designed the courses explicitly to respond to main challenges that are being faced by the health sector, focused in three key areas tied to health career expertise including public health, health informatics, and healthcare management.
The new specializations will be coming out through 2019 and will be accessible for a subscription ranging from $39 to $79 per month. The two master’s degree from Michigan and Imperial which would be focusing on health are taking applications in January.
About Coursera
Coursera was started in 2012 by two Stanford-based Computer Science professors who wanted to share their expertise, experience, and skills with the rest of the world. Professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng placed their courses online for anyone who was interested.
According to them, they taught more learners in a few months as compared to the number of learners they could have taught in a complete lifetime in the classroom. Coursera provides worldwide access to the world’s top education, associating with top universities and organizations to provide courses online.
Image credit: blog.coursera.org
