How Simucase Grew Video Views by 648% in Three Years

Growing Quickly

Every year, online learning platform Simucase creates between 40 and 60 new simulations for students in over 600 allied health profession programs. Starting in speech pathology over a decade ago, Simucase has since expanded into audiology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and social work. One membership gives an account user access to videos across professions, encouraging cross-discipline collaboration from the beginning of a student’s academic training program.

Students can engage with videos in two virtual environments, making Simucase a comprehensive learning tool: simulations, where they can interact with a patient and be graded on their decisions; and patient videos, where students can observe experienced clinicians interacting with patients.

The shift to online learning during the pandemic put Simucase on the fast track. When many on-campus clinics closed and students had to learn from home, Simucase helped its higher education clients meet the challenge. In April 2020, Communication Sciences and Disorders students at Illinois State University were able to earn clinical clock hours through the Simucase platform, even when the on-campus clinic was closed. This let students stay on track and graduate on time.

Growing Pains

The quick expansion meant that Simucase was soon hosting 14,000 video assets on its platform, up from 8,000 before expanding into audiology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and social work. Adding another layer of complexity, Simucase’s simulation videos branch out, showing a new video after a user makes a decision. This feature means that a simulation could in fact contain anywhere from 10-200 videos.

“We were looking for a secure system to deliver the media to our customers,” said Katie Ondo, director of operations at Simucase. This delivery need required organization into a content library for patient videos in particular, including meta-tagging for client-side searchability. “We wanted to be able to categorize and tag all of the individual video files, so that our users could search and find content that's relevant to what they want to learn.”

Creating a First

Simucase needed an end-to-end video solution that would support its mission of content delivery to a large audience with the highest security, without having to rely on multiple external vendors.

Accessibility was critical, especially around closed captioning. Previous to working with Brightcove, Simucase had been using a multistep process involving multiple vendors. “We wanted a more streamlined solution for how we can accomplish what we need in terms of accessibility,” said Ondo.

In addition to organization, Simucase also needed security to protect the confidentiality of the patient stories. “Not being able to download the content and have it shared externally was an important factor for us in the decision-making.”

Solutions

Simucase decided that Brightcove’s Video Cloud covered all these bases.

Simucase was able to adapt its Video Cloud account to its unique needs. Using Brightcove’s metadata and aligning it with Simucase’s search functions, Simucase sorted the patient videos into a library, while Brightcove’s in-house captioning services ensured the high level of accessibility Simucase requires. No more outsourcing meant quicker video uploads, letting the Simucase team move on to the next video.

With Brightcove’s uploading capabilities, Simucase delivers content on both desktop and mobile seamlessly, letting students learn wherever and whenever they can. Those 14,000 (and counting) video assets were securely uploaded and stored using Brightcove’s cloud server.

Lastly, Simucase leaned on Brightcove’s analytics to get a clear idea of video completion rates, which helps the learning platform determine how useful certain videos are and what they can do to increase them.

Better Training, Better Outcomes

Thanks to Brightcove’s solutions, Simucase has seen the impact of the patient videos in real time. “We had over 187,000 video views last year,” said Ondo, up from 25,000 in 2018 – a 648% increase.

But the marker for success is more than views. Ondo added, “With each video view, a future professional learns more about the patients they will work with in the future.” Thanks to Brightcove’s Video Cloud, Simucase can continue on the leading edge of remote learning and, most importantly, enable cross-professional collaboration that leads to better patient outcomes.