Education and marketing are so closely aligned at the Cerner Corporation, a healthcare IT company based in Kansas City, Missouri, that the two functions reside within the same department—and the department is led by the chief learning officer.

The newly created business unit, known as the Catalyst Organization, represents not only the recognition of workforce and client training's importance at Cerner, but also the blurred distinction between learning and marketing.

"We realized that within both organizations, we were trying to change opinion and behavior," explains Robert Campbell, the vice president and CLO. It simply made sense to combine the two previously separate units, he says.

As a case in point, Campbell says the line between them is invisible in an initiative known as the Healthy Community Simulation, which he is presenting as last year's most innovative learning program. It's an interactive workshop given to community leaders across the country to promote the management of the community's overall health—while raising the company's profile. (Cerner is a supplier of electronic medical recordkeeping systems.)

The simulation is comprised of teams of individuals who represent employers, health systems, and practitioners (individual providers and clinics). Their assignment is to devise a single plan that maximizes the health of the population during an imaginary nine-year period.

Specifically, their three-point goal is to improve the community's overall quality of health, improve the quality of healthcare delivery, and lower costs. The teams must reconcile competing interests as they jointly devise a cohesive plan. Following the simulation, participants identify next steps to developing and implementing a real-life plan for their actual communities.

Since implementing the simulation in August 2011, Cerner has delivered more than a dozen workshops to more than 200 participants, including internal associates. Campbell says results include refreshingly different healthcare models that reflect original thinking. In addition, clients have found them to be extremely valuable to frame strategic planning for city councils and healthcare organization boards.

Campbell says the simulation has proved in its first year to be a valuable tool that furthers both education and marketing goals indistinguisably. It teaches important new skills while providing a natural tie-in for Cerner's services to healthcare providers and employers.

Another successful merger of learning and marketing priorities is uCern, Cerner's client-facing social business and learning platform. The four-year-old site serves some 40,000 individuals from 3,000 organizations in 21 countries with a variety of learning and collaboration opportunities. The platform connects associates, clients, and partners and allows them to share information freely in an informal setting. Participants use uCern to share such content as documents, videos, blogs, and wiki pages, and to engage in discussions within communities of practice and interest.

It has "changed the culture of our organization" by its ability to support and drive innovation, and by closing the gap between discovery and adoption, Campbell explains. Coming next for the site will be an expansion into 3.0 technologies to improve personalization with clients and associates.