Delivering Immersive Training with Syneos Health Using Amazon GameLift Streams

Syneos employs thousands of CRAs around the world. Previously, CRAs were trained onsite through workshops with limited interactivity and no exposure to the clinical sites where they would eventually work. “It was like teaching somebody how to drive a car from a book,” says Tom Winters, associate director of clinical operations and global operations services at Syneos.

In 2023, Syneos began developing an immersive training game to make learning more interactive, giving CRAs firsthand experience with the tasks that they would perform in the field. “We didn’t want to just have trainees click a button and watch a video,” says Celeste Mosby, senior vice president at Syneos. “We want people experiencing things, touching things, making decisions.”

The company began building a solution using Unreal Editor for Fortnite by AWS Partner Epic Games. However, Syneos encountered multiple roadblocks related to compliance regulations and infrastructure limitations, such as graphics card requirements. The company evaluated various options to deliver the solution—including sending out gaming consoles to every CRA—but each option led to additional hurdles.

“We had to push reset and start all over again,” says Winters.

Syneos partnered with creative services agency Horizon Productions (Horizon) to develop ClinQuest, a standalone training game built on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5. The teams customized the solution to include multiple opportunities to apply learning with quizzes and challenges, as well as time-tracking and reporting features. “It opened up a lot of doors in terms of custom features and also analytics and tracking,” says Jonas Monanteras, immersive producer at Horizon.

However, Syneos still needed a way to deliver the game. “We have CRAs in almost every country,” says Winters. “We were looking for a partner who could stream this solution globally.” Syneos interviewed three cloud providers before selecting AWS. “Our team already had experience using AWS, and the flexibility of the environment was important,” says Mosby. “But ultimately, we chose AWS because it felt like the AWS team was just as invested in our success as we were.”

The company began using Amazon GameLift Streams to deliver its interactive training experience, providing low-latency streaming to its CRAs worldwide without special equipment or downloads. Users can simply log in to ClinQuest and start training.

CRAs who tested ClinQuest found it engaging and enjoyable, resulting in improved retention and more effective training. “We were looking for something that was very immersive and would get the trainee in the environment,” says Jim Mather, multimedia manager at Syneos. “We looked into virtual reality and things like that, but the cost was so high. Using Amazon GameLift Streams saved us a lot of time and budget and helped us move quickly and efficiently to deployment.”

ClinQuest has the built-in ability to extract training data from sessions, helping Syneos assess trainee progress. “Before I send CRAs out into the field, I need assurance that they know what they’re doing,” says Winters. “Using this training environment gives them the chance to prove that.”

Focusing on scalability, a major milestone that the teams accomplished was solving how to open a new stream when needed. When one stream becomes crowded, another will automatically open, so there’s no need for monitoring. “That was a game changer for us,” says Mosby.

By building a standalone game that’s streamed directly to users, Syneos has created a scalable, customizable training solution that isn’t limited by infrastructure. “Using AWS unlocks the ability to use things like Unreal Engine from Epic Games,” says Monanteras. “As technology increases, we’re not constrained by hardware and distribution. We can deliver new features straight to the customer.”

 

Syneos will continue building on the success of this innovative use of gaming technology and plans to use Amazon GameLift Streams to deliver more training solutions. “Now that we’re up and running, there are so many other use cases,” says Mosby. “All the hard work to get here has opened up an infrastructure where we can custom build other virtual training environments.”

The company is proud of the Syneos, Horizon, and AWS teams’ dedication to conceptualizing, building, and delivering this training solution, all while keeping industry regulations in mind. “Most corporate environments don’t support this type of technology because of data privacy restrictions and because pharmaceuticals is a very regulated environment,” says Mosby. “The fact that we accomplished this in both the corporate and the pharmaceutical environment—while meeting those requirements—is pretty amazing.”