This year’s annual IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS) Learning Impact Awards (LIAs) – announced at a ceremony in Long Beach, California, this month – broke with tradition by instituting a new, Platinum award.

This award went to eXact learning solutions and e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH), for the world’s largest and most successful online medical content production initiative. This initiative – in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) – has, since its inception in 2006, delivered more than 450,000 hours (some 48 years) of medical training to more than 750,000 users to date, launching more than 1m medical learning objects online, continuously training that UK’s national health professionals in more than 50 subject matter areas including oncology, radiology, dermatology, dentistry, emergency, primary care as well as adolescent and child health.

Comment: An online and mobile learning content management and digital repository solutions provider, eXact learning solutions is well established as an LIA winner. It was named a winner in 2007 (when it was known as Giunti Labs) and in 2010. This year, in addition to winning the inaugural Platinum Award, it received a Leadership Award for its work for the Birmingham City Learning Platform – an initiative which involves over 190 Birmingham schools and is used by teachers, pupils, parents, governors and administrators to facilitate the sharing of information and create a Birmingham-wide social learning community.

It’s great to have awards. They do all sorts of positive things. They are a measure of recognition and reward for the winners (and there’s precious little of that sort of thing in today’s business world). They help to highlight and promote best practice, along with leading edge technology and applications. They can provide a plausible excuse for a party.

These two recent award winning projects also have some real world benefits: helping Birmingham’s schoolchildren and the UK’s health professionals to develop their respective knowledge and skills to the full. And, if these things are achieved, even a Platinum Award pales a bit by comparison.