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How HEE West Midlands scaled from pilot to regional rollout, achieving 110x growth in users

“We needed a platform and a partner that was able to get us up and running as quickly as possible.”

Usman Ahmed, Head of Virtual Learning, HEE West Midlands

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Industry

Healthcare

Use case

Workforce Training

Solution

Moodle LMS

Outcomes at a glance

110x growth in training reach (from a 100-user pilot to 11,000+ active users)

No. Users

+15,000 users

Sector/Use Case

Healthcare
Workforce Training

Phuong Hong Nguyen

Digital Marketing Executive

  • Published
  • April 23, 2026

How HEE West Midlands scaled surgical training to 11,000+ users with Moodle LMS.

Health Education England West Midlands (HEEWM) is part of the NHS responsible for educating and training the healthcare workforce across the region.

The organisation plays a critical role in ensuring clinicians and trainees receive high-quality, standardised education to support safe and effective patient care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, HEEWM led the rapid transition of postgraduate clinical training into a fully virtual environment to ensure continuity of mandatory education across surgical programmes.

The Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an immediate disruption to all face-to-face clinical teaching, which is a mandatory component of postgraduate medical training.

HEE West Midlands needed to rapidly adapt its delivery model while maintaining the quality and consistency of surgical education.

Key challenges included:

  • Immediate loss of face-to-face teaching due to COVID-19 restrictions
  • Need to maintain mandatory training continuity for surgical trainees
  • Requirement for a secure, scalable platform to support “anytime, anywhere” learning
  • Demand for high-quality virtual delivery across large geographical regions
  • Need to reduce administrative burden for faculty while scaling delivery
  • Ensuring consistent quality and structure across multiple programmes

A fast, reliable, and fully hosted virtual learning solution was urgently required.

The Solution

HEE West Midlands partnered with Hubken to implement a scalable Moodle LMS integrated with BigBlueButton to deliver a fully virtual training environment.

  • Rapid deployment of a virtual learning platform during COVID-19: Hubken implemented a secure, hosted Moodle LMS quickly to ensure surgical training could continue without disruption when face-to-face teaching was no longer possible.
  • Virtual classroom integration for live teaching delivery: The platform was integrated with BigBlueButton to enable real-time online teaching sessions for postgraduate surgical trainees across the region.
  • Centralised and standardised training delivery: All course materials and clinical resources were brought together in one platform, with a consistent structure to ensure high-quality and uniform training across programmes.
  • Improved engagement and reduced administrative workload: Built-in tools for attendance tracking, feedback collection, and learner engagement helped improve visibility while reducing manual administrative tasks for education teams.
  • Scalable foundation for long-term clinical training: The platform was designed to grow with increasing demand, providing a stable and scalable digital environment for ongoing NHS training delivery.

The Impact

The platform has become a core part of postgraduate surgical training delivery across the region, enabling a shift from emergency virtual delivery to a sustained, scalable model.

Scaled regional training delivery: The system grew from a small pilot of 100 users to 11,000+ active users, establishing a fully regional digital training infrastructure for surgical education.

Built for continued growth: The platform now supports up to 15,000+ users, ensuring it can accommodate increasing clinical training demand across the NHS.

High-quality learner experience: 91% of learners rated the delivery and administration of training as excellent or very good, reflecting strong engagement and usability.

Reduced administrative burden: Automation of routine processes significantly reduced manual workload for medical education teams, improving operational efficiency.

Wider NHS adoption: The platform has seen growing uptake across multiple clinical training programmes, becoming a core part of regional postgraduate medical education.

“We needed a platform and a partner that was able to get us up and running as quickly as possible. Hubken was great in helping our teams respond to the sudden changes brought about by COVID.”

Usman Ahmed
Head of Virtual Learning, HEE West Midlands