Best healthcare learning management systems: Software comparison for 2025
Delivering consistent, high-quality training to healthcare employees has never been more critical. From HIPAA regulations to clinical best practices, medical professionals require learning experiences that keep them up-to-date and reduce compliance risks. A learning management system (LMS) designed for healthcare can transform how your organization handles compliance training, ongoing skills development, and daily patient care responsibilities.
Whether you manage a hospital, clinic, or telehealth facility, the right healthcare LMS can help you streamline employee onboarding, reduce knowledge gaps, and maintain top-notch continuing education for all employees.
In this guide, we’ll dive into healthcare LMS essentials, exploring the best LMS for healthcare settings, as well as actionable tips on choosing the right platform for your business needs as a healthcare organization.
What is healthcare LMS?
A healthcare learning management system centralizes training programs, assessment tools, and compliance features in one environment.
Healthcare LMS platforms serve hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, clinical research sites, and more—anywhere staff need structured, interactive learning and related features. Healthcare LMS solutions track professional competency, issue relevant certifications, and ensure compliance with industry regulations, from HIPAA guidelines to electronic health records (EHR) management.
Purposes of healthcare LMS
A healthcare LMS can serve many purposes. Some of the most common are:
- Compliance training: Healthcare organizations face stringent rules like HIPAA or OSHA. A robust LMS ensures employees complete mandatory training and tracks and documents progress for audits.
- Continuing education: Medical professionals must update their skills, and e-learning can be a fast and convenient way to do so. By hosting customizable content (from clinical guidelines to advanced therapies), a healthcare LMS seamlessly supports continuing education for different types of employees.
- Certification tracking: Your staff—physicians, nurses, or pharmacists—often need to refresh licenses or meet new standards. A healthcare learning platform comes with relevant SCORM course packages, automates reminders, and logs each credential.
- Enhanced patient safety: By making sure staff members maintain and consistently improve their knowledge, you foster better decision-making, ultimately improving patient outcomes.
Industries typically adopting a healthcare LMS include large hospitals, smaller clinics, biotech startups, telehealth providers, and pharmaceutical organizations looking to keep their workforce at the cutting edge. In other words, this is a technology with broad application—just about any type of healthcare organization can benefit from an LMS tailored to helping healthcare professionals learn and stay compliant.
Why should you implement a healthcare LMS?
If you’re wondering about the main drivers for adopting an LMS in healthcare organizations, here are some key use cases:
Onboarding and training new healthcare staff
Healthcare roles can be complex, with patient protocols, compliance training, and specialized equipment. A healthcare LMS helps you customize orientation modules that cover everything from organizational policies to safety procedures and fundamental clinical knowledge. Having a structured approach to educational onboarding for new employees can cut down on confusion and ramp up new workers more quickly.
Compliance and regulatory training
Regulations like HIPAA demand airtight data security and patient privacy practices. A healthcare learning management system ensures each employee is trained on relevant mandates, from HIPAA rules to infection control. With built-in tracking for progress and assessments, you can also prove to auditors and regulators that your employees remain up to date.
Continuing medical education (CME) and professional development
Medical staff require ongoing continuing education to maintain many of their certifications. A robust healthcare LMS platform can organize relevant SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model, a set of LMS technical standards that ensure courses can be uploaded and reused across various platforms) or other content modules for staff to access. They can also often do this on their own schedules, which adds convenience for healthcare workers, who often work rotating shifts.
And aside from maintaining certifications, an LMS can help employees learn new skills and bridge knowledge gaps. In turn, this means your organization sustains high-quality patient care and reduces medical errors.
Remote healthcare training
Telehealth has become central to the healthcare industry. With an LMS, you can distribute interactive courses to off-site employees or clinical staff who travel between locations. This ensures everyone in your workforce—no matter their location—gets consistent, relevant training.
7 best LMS software for healthcare
In 2025, multiple healthcare LMS platforms stand out for their performance, customizable features, and compliance readiness. Below is a quick look at seven solutions that address critical training and compliance needs for healthcare organizations.
Rippling
Rippling offers a human capital management (HCM) solution with a full suite of HR tools, including a robust learning management system. Rippling for healthcare consolidates payroll, benefits administration, training, and more, all in one place. For example, you can automatically assign mandatory compliance training based on an employee’s location when they complete their new-hire orientation, and the platform won’t allow them to clock into the integrated time and attendance software until they’re fully up-to-date. Rippling also acts as a single source of truth, storing employee information alongside records for certifications, compliance, and more.
Key advantages:
- All-in-one, unified platform for HR, payroll, IT, and finance—alongside your healthcare LMS—to reduce organizational complexity
- Automated scheduling and reminders
- Single sign-on (SSO) to unify logins and streamline the user experience for learners
- Real-time analytics to track progress across departments
- Custom reporting tools for data-driven decision-making
- Support for various training content formats and compliance with standards like SCORM
2. Docebo
A well-recognized name in the healthcare industry for e-learning, Docebo offers learning experiences enhanced by AI, which means staff get course recommendations and micro-lessons based on their role or prior performance. DOCEBO also offers SCORM support and gamification tools to help boost employee engagement.
Key features:
- AI-driven personalized learning that tailors modules to each user
- Simple course creation and management, including a library of pre-built modules
- Integrations with EHR systems and other software
- Customizable dashboards for tracking team progress
3. Absorb LMS
Absorb LMS is a healthcare learning management system that offers user-friendly dashboards and powerful assessment capabilities. Organizations can design tailored coursework for compliance topics—like HIPAA or CDC guidelines—and use Absorb LMS to track test results or certification statuses.
Key features:
- Custom user roles for managers and learners
- Reporting tools that break down performance by department or location
- SCORM-compatible environment for easy import of e-learning modules
- Mobile-friendly learning platform that suits on-the-go staff
4. Litmos
Known for its intuitive learning platform, Litmos LMS can be used by healthcare organizations looking for streamlined course creation and interactive lessons. Built-in gamification encourages learners to complete modules and earn badges.
Key features:
- Tailored gamification elements for employee engagement
- Customizable themes to align with your facility’s brand identity
- SCORM support for versatile course imports
- User-friendly interface for less learning curve
5. TalentLMS
TalentLMS is a cloud-based LMS that offers healthcare organizations access to structured training programs with a focus on personalized learning—meaning staff in different roles (like doctors, nurses, or front-desk workers) see content suited to their daily tasks.
Key features:
- Quick setup for new accounts and workforce expansions
- Pre-built assessments and quizzes for measuring competency
- Cross-device compatibility so employees can train from any location
- SSO integration options for fast, secure sign-ons
6. 360Learning
360Learning is a collaborative learning management system that fosters peer-to-peer engagement. Healthcare teams can share best practices, hold group discussions, and co-create modules that reflect real-world scenarios.
Key features:
- Emphasis on co-authored content and social learning
- Tools for feedback loops and peer assessment
- SCORM support for standardized course packaging
- Encourages staff-driven knowledge sharing
7. HealthStream
Specifically designed for the healthcare industry, HealthStream integrates domain expertise into its LMS with tailored training modules, staff credential management, and compliance tracking. It also places an emphasis on patient safety by offering ongoing training updates and notifications when staff credentials near expiration.
Key features:
- Focused entirely on healthcare use cases, from compliance with HIPAA to electronic health records (EHR) best practices
- Custom libraries for clinical training and other healthcare topics
- Built-in role-based dashboards
- Automated compliance alerts for recertification
5 features to look for in healthcare LMS software
Selecting the right healthcare LMS requires evaluating whether it supports your unique business needs—from patient confidentiality to specialized clinical skill training. Below are five essential learning management system features:
1. Compliance and certification tracking
Between HIPAA guidelines, OSHA, and government licensure, healthcare organizations handle multiple layers of compliance. Your LMS needs to manage certification renewals, store proof of completion, and flag employees who risk going out of compliance so you can make the necessary corrections before penalties hit.
2. Integration with HR and healthcare IT systems
Look for an LMS that’s integrated with other tools—or that offers a robust API to connect it with the rest of your tech stack, from your EHR to your scheduling software. A well-integrated environment cuts down on data duplication, speeds up training workflows, and allows you to automate workflows—for example, automatically enrolling new hires in required trainings during onboarding.
3. Mobile learning capabilities
Busy clinicians often juggle unpredictable schedules. An LMS with mobile compatibility allows for on-the-go training, helping staff complete modules or watch micro-learning videos whenever they find a gap in their day.
4. Automated reporting and analytics
You need real-time analytics to measure progress and see if staff are finishing compliance training on time. Look for an LMS that offers features like a customizable dashboard, which can help managers see at a glance who is lagging behind. Many top systems also deliver advanced reporting tools that break down assessment results by employee role, skill, or topic. Being able to create custom reports and parse through analytics means your LMS will help you make strategic, data-driven decisions about where to invest your organization’s valuable training resources.
5. Role-based access and security controls
Healthcare data can be sensitive. By enforcing role-based permissions, your LMS ensures that staff only see the content or patient data relevant to their function. This is critical for HIPAA compliance and for safeguarding organizational and industry-wide privacy requirements.
How to choose the best learning management system for healthcare
Amid a sea of LMS platforms, picking the best match for your healthcare organization can be a challenge. Here are four practical guidelines for how to choose an LMS:
Compliance with industry regulations
Any learning management system used in healthcare needs to handle compliance training effectively, from HIPAA and OSHA compliance to professional licensing and certifications and other local regulations. Make sure your chosen LMS can track each learner’s records, store digital signatures, and prove staff have completed mandatory modules based on their roles, locations, and other criteria.
Customization options for healthcare-specific training
Healthcare staff need specialized modules to learn about medical procedures, infection control, device usage in healthcare settings, and more.
Check if the learning management system you’re considering has a healthcare-specific library and supports custom or tailored modules and other features for course creation. For example, SCORM compliance is handy if you want to import existing course packages from other platforms and content creators.
User experience and accessibility for medical staff
Doctors, nurses, and technicians don’t have time for a clunky interface. LMS systems that are intuitive, with minimal steps to launch, can help staff adopt the platform quickly and with less training needed to get up and running. Also, make sure the system supports mobile access for providers’ busy, on-the-go schedules.
Scalability for growing healthcare organizations
Your healthcare facility may acquire additional branches or expand busy departments. The learning management system you choose should adapt to larger numbers of learners, new departments, and advanced analytics demands. Make sure you can easily update modules or introduce new training programs as your organization grows.
Simplify healthcare training with Rippling
Rippling’s LMS software makes it easier than ever for healthcare organizations to launch custom employee training programs that keep their teams up-to-date on the latest procedures and best practices—and protect them from compliance risks.
Rippling for healthcare is built to help you stay on top of compliance to ensure quality care—you can:
- Track certifications and licenses, and automatically send reminders to employees to upload their latest documentation
- Set policies that only allow staff with current medical licenses, certifications, and permits to clock in
- Automatically enroll employees in role- and location-specific training requirements and track their completion
- Stay up to date with global, federal, state, and local labor laws, and get alerts for potential violations
Rippling also simplifies HR and payroll by consolidating them on one platform so you can better support your staff to provide the best patient care. With time-saving automations, you can simplify routine healthcare HR processes, like onboarding new workers or making complex payroll calculations—from shift differentials to overtime, on-call pay, and more.
Healthcare learning management system FAQs
What is the best learning management system for healthcare?
The “best” solution depends on your specific needs, but Rippling’s LMS software is part of a unified HCM platform built on a single source of truth for employee data, meaning all your tools for HR, IT, and finance are in one place, and you can streamline and automate more administrative tasks than any other software.
What is the difference between LMS and LCMS?
While both revolve around e-learning, an LCMS (learning content management system) focuses on authoring and managing large amounts of content, whereas an LMS (learning management system) primarily handles training delivery, assessment, and user progress tracking. Often, organizations using an LCMS produce and reuse content, then deliver it to learners via an LMS or learning platform.
What is the difference between KMS and LMS?
A KMS (knowledge management system) archives documents, research, and organizational best practices for easy retrieval. An LMS, in contrast, is specifically built for delivering and overseeing training programs, measuring learner performance, and awarding certifications. While a KMS might store references or procedure guides, the LMS ensures staff actively engage with modules, pass assessments, and measure skill competency.
This blog is based on information available to Rippling as of April 11, 2025.
Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.
