Offering online continuing education materials is a great way to keep medical association members engaged or create a smooth training process for healthcare employees. However, healthcare organizations need something built for their needs to help manage compliance, adhere to strict training standards, and ensure information retention. In fact, robust development programs that combine interactive training modules and continuous learning strategies are increasingly essential for healthcare providers.
A healthcare learning management system (LMS) is a great solution. An LMS for healthcare is software that is purpose-built for continuing medical education (CME). What are the best options, and what features should you look for? Stick around as we break down the best healthcare LMSs to help you find the right option for your needs. By integrating social learning elements and analysing learner progress metrics, you can enhance knowledge retention and overall learner engagement.
What Is a Learning Management System in Healthcare?
A healthcare LMS, also called a medical LMS, is software that’s built to deliver, track, and manage educational materials for healthcare professionals. Healthcare LMSs are often used for training purposes in medical organizations or for providing CME courses that help professionals advance their skills and careers. These training programs ensure that healthcare organizations can offer mandatory training and accessible online courses that maintain regulatory compliance and improve patient outcomes.
One of the main benefits of delivering educational content through an LMS is that it makes all learning materials available in an accessible format that allows professionals to learn whenever they have time in their busy schedules. It’s a great option to provide flexible training that works for different needs. Because learners can access training materials anytime from their devices, the system supports timely completion and better learner progress tracking.
What Are the Four Types of Learning Management Systems?
The four types of LMSs are:
- Cloud-based (SaaS) LMS:
Cloud-based LMSs are usually the most popular choice. They provide organizations with a pre-built solution that you don’t have to host or build on your own. These often have a lower learning curve to get started, with flexibility to customize content and branding to your needs.
- On-premise:
An on-premise LMS is one that an organization runs on its own internal servers and network. This option provides more control over the system, but also requires more technical skill to set up and manage. It’s usually best for organizations with larger teams.
- Open-source:
An open-source option will provide you with the source code for the LMS for free. It’s an affordable option that’s highly customizable, but requires a lot of technical skill to manage it, and you won’t get much support from the company that created the source code.
- Custom-built:
Some organizations will pay developers to build a custom LMS that’s fully tailored to their needs. However, this option will cost a lot and requires a high level of technical expertise to build it and continue to manage the system.
Usually, most organizations implementing an LMS for CME will prefer the balance offered by cloud-based systems, so we focused the top options listed later in this article on cloud-based solutions. Selecting the right LMS platform means weighing ease of use, scalability, and strong reporting tools against the complexity of your compliance tracking needs.
What Are the Most Important Features for Healthcare LMS in 2025?
Before we get into the list of top options for 2025, it’s important to know what features are the most important to have in a healthcare LMS. Some key features you’ll want to have are:
- Compliance management and tracking: A CME LMS should help organizations maintain compliance, such as tracking completion of compliance training or certificate renewals. Integration with reporting systems through ACCME, JA-PARS, CE Broker, and CPE Monitor is often helpful for automatic credit reporting and certificate maintenance.
- Personalized learning paths: Associations that offer CME courses will want to keep learners engaged and working on materials that align with their current needs. A system that offers personalized learning will help create a smooth process that keeps learners enrolling in new courses.
- Reporting and analytics: What are your most popular courses? Are there any key places where learners are getting stuck and quitting? Having reporting and analytics available on the platform can help identify essential information like that, so you can improve your system over time to achieve better experiences.
- Integration with the tools you use: You should be able to make your LMS feel like part of your organization’s system. Integrations with tools like your association management system (AMS) or customer relationship management (CRM) software will help you keep your information and branding consistent across platforms.
- Scalability: Ideally, you’ll want to choose a system that allows you to continue creating new materials for the long term. That allows you to build a full course library that healthcare professionals can continue to benefit from as your organization grows.
- Ease of use: Medical associations may have small staffs with varying levels of technical expertise. In most cases, it’s best to look for medical education technology that makes it easy to get started, upload materials, and customize content to your needs. The presence of social learning features and an intuitive interface can significantly boost learner engagement and help fill knowledge gaps across the healthcare industry.
What Are the Top Healthcare Learning Management Systems Available in 2025?
The best learning management systems for healthcare include:
1. EthosCE From Cadmium
EthosCE is an LMS that healthcare professionals trust to manage the complexities of continuing healthcare education.
Some of the top features that stand out about EthosCE are:
- Ease of use: EthosCE provides a layout that’s easy for administrators and learners to navigate. You’ll clearly see where to go to upload content, adjust the settings and design to create custom modules, and manage your entire course library.
- Data and analytics: The data and analytics interface in the platform will help you track educational outcomes and understand how learners are engaging with your content.
- Create enduring content: The platform is built to help you develop a complete course library that can continue to have an impact on new members. You can even integrate it with training events or workshops for a more engaging experience.
- Continuing education reporting: EthosCE integrates with several reporting systems for major accrediting organizations, such as ACCME, JA-PARS, CE Broker, and CPE Monitor, to automatically report learning outcomes and help with certificate maintenance.
Each of these features and more make EthosCE a top choice for medical organizations to provide a wide range of learning options for professionals at different stages of their educational journey. By incorporating continuous learning pathways and strong compliance tracking, EthosCE helps ensure top‑notch performance for healthcare providers.
2. HealthStream
HealthStream is a workforce management software designed for healthcare organizations. Part of its features includes a healthcare education platform that can help organizations create and manage continuing education or training content.
The platform provides several features to help with healthcare continuing education, such as video learning, reporting and analytics, and credential management.
However, HealthStream does have a significant drawback since a lot of users report a high learning curve on the platform. Specifically, there are limited options for automation or integration, the interface can feel a bit outdated, and the reporting process is harder to set up. Each of those downsides can make it harder for medical associations with small staffs to use the platform.
3. Relias
Relias is another healthcare workforce management solution that offers options for learning management and compliance training.
It’s a decent solution to upload content and manage it within a simple interface. That said, it’s a fairly basic solution with limited customization or options for learner engagement, so healthcare associations may find that they outgrow it quickly while trying to create a full course library.
Which LMS Platforms Specialize in Continuing Medical Education?
Each of the options listed above provides features that help create CME materials. However, they don’t all have the same focus. EthosCE from Cadmium is the option that focuses specifically on continuing education for healthcare professionals, while HealthStream and Relias are more focused on overall workforce management.
You’ll find that EthosCE offers more features designed to improve the learning process, such as:
- Options for engagement with different modes of learning
- The ability to create customizable course modules
- Integrations with the tools you use, such as your AMS
- In-depth reporting and analytics
- Features to create a searchable course library for personalized learning
Each feature is focused specifically on continuing education to make the platform feel purposeful and easier to navigate.
How Do You Choose the Right Healthcare LMS for Your Organization?
Not sure which option to choose? Here are some things to consider before deciding.
What Questions Should You Ask During the LMS Evaluation Process?
As you’re evaluating LMSs for healthcare, some questions to ask are:
- Does it offer all the features you need? Features will differ between options, such as the amount of customizability or integrations with other tools, so make sure it offers the specific features you need for long-term success.
- Is it scalable? You want your learning software to be able to grow with your organization. That includes the ability to build a complete course library, continue to add new members, and develop options for personalized experiences.
- How easy is it to use? Adding software to your team’s workflow is a big step. It’s helpful if the software is easy to use to minimize frustration and confusion during the process.
- Does it work with major accrediting organizations? Ideally, you’ll want your software to offer automatic reporting with major accrediting organizations, such as ACCME or JA-PARS. It’ll help you provide solutions that align with healthcare professionals’ needs when they want to maintain certifications.
How Do You Calculate ROI and Total Cost of Ownership for Healthcare LMS?
The ROI you can get from the software also matters in the decision-making process. To calculate ROI on purchasing a healthcare LMS, you’ll want to consider:
- How much does the LMS cost? Pricing varies by provider, such as a flat one-time fee or a monthly subscription price.
- How much will it cost to set it up and maintain? Consider the costs involved in setting up the software, maintaining it, and training your team to use it effectively.
- How much can you make from course sales? Determine how much you plan to charge for continuing education courses you offer and how many sales you project you’ll get each month. Then, compare that against the costs above to see if you’ll generate a profit over time.
It’s also important to consider how easy it is to sell and promote courses you create on the platform, how building a course library can help you scale revenue over time, and which options offer reporting and analytics to help you improve outcomes.
When you’re looking at options, EthosCE is a great choice that can help you scale learning materials, easily promote them to new learners, and assess your performance.
What Are the Implementation and Success Strategies for Healthcare LMS?
Once you choose an option, it’s time to implement it into your organization's system. Let’s review some tips that can help.
How Long Does Healthcare LMS Implementation Typically Take?
The amount of time it takes to implement a healthcare LMS depends on the option you choose. Cloud-based LMSs are usually pretty easy to get set up and added to your workflow, taking a few weeks in many cases. However, more complex options may take a few months to over a year to fully set up and implement.
When you use our EthosCE LMS at Cadmium, the goal is to help you get started quickly with a minimal learning curve. Our team also offers support to help with questions along the way to ensure you have everything you need.
What Are the Best Practices for User Adoption in Healthcare Settings?
Some best practices to help with user adoption of an LMS in healthcare settings are:
- Align it with professional development and goals, emphasizing the benefits professionals will get by using it and completing courses.
- Emphasize patient care goals, showing how learning new skills can help professionals achieve better healthcare outcomes.
- Make it engaging through different modes of learning. Some options that can help include interactive activities, gamification, or integration with live workshops.
- Offer ongoing support so learners know that they can ask for help if they get stuck on a section.
- Create rewards or incentives for completing courses that lead to meaningful benefits for healthcare professionals.
How EthosCE From Cadmium Can Help
Cadmium’s LMS designed for healthcare professionals, EthosCE, is designed to meet the needs of healthcare associations and organizations that provide continuing education. It offers several features to help you build a complete course library, develop engaging learning solutions, integrate with major accrediting organizations, and track your progress along the way.
EthosCE is built to help you deliver educational materials that help healthcare professionals develop meaningful skills that impact their career, no matter where they are in their educational journey. Click here to learn more about how EthosCE can make an impact for you.
