MeridianPath and Laboratorios Bagó de Bolivia have been shortlisted for the Learning Technologies Awards 2026 in the category Best Learning Technologies Project, Commercial Sector (UK), for the Bagó Pharmacy Academy. The entry is one of eight finalists in the category, alongside programmes from Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, Mastercard and Unilever. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in London on 11 November 2026.
The Learning Technologies Awards recognise outstanding work in workplace learning. For a Bolivian programme delivered entirely on WhatsApp, the shortlist is a sign that learning design built for people outside the office can stand next to the largest corporate programmes in the world.
A channel nobody was training
Independent pharmacies now account for more than half of retail pharmacy sales in Bolivia. A typical independent pharmacy is run by one person: the owner, who is also the pharmacist legally responsible for what is dispensed, and often the only person behind the counter. She does not work for any laboratory, so no one is obliged to train her, and a classroom course means closing the shop.
Laboratorios Bagó wanted to build a relationship with this channel that a discount cannot buy: to be the laboratory that helps the owner run her pharmacy better.
One short lesson a week, where owners already work
The Bagó Pharmacy Academy ran from April to July 2026 as three courses over three months: clinical knowledge for the winter season, pharmacy finance, and pharmaceutical leadership. Each week, owners received one lesson of around seven minutes on WhatsApp, the same channel they already use to order stock and answer patients. No app, no login and no computer were needed.
Every lesson started from a real situation at the counter and was available as audio, text, short video and a reference card, so each owner could choose how to learn. Questions brought back earlier lessons, using spacing and retrieval practice to turn content into habits. Lessons were reviewed with a practising pharmacist and validated by Bagó’s training team and product manager.
The rep becomes the coach
The design decision the judges asked about most was the two-sided loop. Bagó’s sales representatives took a parallel version of the same course a few days ahead of the owners, and earned points only when the pharmacies they visit completed their lessons. The weekly sales visit became a follow-up conversation about what the owner had just learned. The technology delivered the lesson; the conversation happened between two people who already knew each other.
What the data showed
The first edition reached 168 pharmacy owners and 35 sales representatives in eight cities.
- 76% of enrolled owners completed the first course, against Bagó’s own projection of 61 to 70%
- 82% of those went on to complete the second course, and 83% of those completed the third
- 77% of around 3,800 quiz answers were correct at the first attempt
- 95% of graduates reported meaningful change in how they run their pharmacy, and 98% would recommend the Academy
- Three months later, every graduate who answered a follow-up said they were still applying what they learned
Audio was the most popular format (34%), and video, the most expensive to produce and to download on limited mobile data, was the least used (14%). Reminders sent before a lesson brought people back far more often than reminders sent after a missed one, a finding that is now shaping how MeridianPath designs re-engagement.
Presenting to the judges
In September, Cristina Loma, Founder and CEO of MeridianPath, presented the programme to the judging panel together with Paola Pérez, OTC Product Manager at Laboratorios Bagó de Bolivia. Presenting jointly mattered: the Academy was designed with Bagó’s commercial, training and marketing teams from the start, and it was Bagó’s team who proposed bringing the sales representatives into the programme before launch.
What comes next
The Academy did not end with the first edition. Bagó has bought a second, larger edition of more than 400 pharmacy owners, which is running now, and the Academy has become Bagó’s umbrella for training the independent pharmacy channel. Future programmes, starting with the laboratory’s collagen portfolio, will run inside it with the same model of owner and representative learning together.
Whatever the result on 11 November, the shortlist confirms something MeridianPath sees in every programme: the people who do the most important work in a value chain are often the ones nobody trains, and they learn best when learning arrives in the flow of their working day.
Thank you to Paola Pérez and the teams at Laboratorios Bagó de Bolivia, to the pharmacy owners and sales representatives who took part and shared their feedback, and to the MeridianPath team who designed and delivered the Academy.
