The health and healthcare industry, like many other sectors, has transitioned much of its training, education, and professional development to healthcare e learning. The reasons are simple. eLearning for health-related topics provides access to educational content and training materials from anywhere with an internet connection. It is more cost-effective and scalable than classroom training, allowing for consistent delivery of content.
Healthcare eLearning also supports multimedia and multi-language experiences to meet diverse learning needs. In this article, we discuss how healthcare e learning offers a versatile and practical approach to continuing medical education, clinician training, and public health awareness—and share practical tips for creating impactful online learning for healthcare programs.
Key takeaways
- Healthcare eLearning supports clinical training, compliance, and patient education in a scalable and cost-effective format.
- eLearning solutions for medical and health programs improve accessibility, consistency, and engagement.
- Digital learning platforms for healthcare professionals enable continuing education, certification tracking, and compliance management.
- Using tools like LEAi streamlines course creation, helping organizations maintain accurate, up-to-date, and credible training materials.
- The most effective eLearning for healthcare combines multimedia content, interactivity, and ongoing feedback to ensure lasting learning outcomes.
How the health industry uses eLearning
There are many ways that eLearning in healthcare is used to educate clinicians, patients, and administrators. It is an effective way to deliver clinical training to healthcare professionals on new medical advances, diagnostic techniques, surgical procedures, medical equipment, or the use of electronic health record (EHR) systems.
It can also deliver continuing medical education (CME) to help doctors, nurses, and allied professionals stay current with the latest research and best practices. When hosted on a digital learning platform for healthcare professionals, eLearning can track course completions and assessment results, providing CME-approved credits for maintaining licenses and certifications.
Beyond clinical education, online learning for healthcare is also widely used for patient and public health education. The modular, self-paced format makes it easy to educate patients about conditions, treatment options, and chronic disease management.
Healthcare compliance and regulation training also benefits from eLearning. Complex topics can be delivered as short, digestible microlearning modules, making it easier and more cost-effective to update materials as regulations evolve.
In healthcare facilities, healthcare eLearning examples include employee onboarding, telehealth training, pharmaceutical education, and instruction in patient safety or quality improvement protocols. As these examples show, eLearning is a versatile tool for clinical training, compliance, and patient engagement.
Health learning centers
Health learning centers, also known as health education centers, are facilities or online platforms designed to promote health literacy and facilitate education on various health topics. These centers take many forms including:
- Facilities in hospitals and clinics that may offer informational materials, workshops, and seminars on various health topics such as nutrition, chronic disease management, mental health, infection prevention and control and more.
- Community centers, schools and universities that offer classes or training on health topics, self-care, fitness classes, and preventive health screenings to the local population.
- Websites, online platforms, mobile apps or health learning apps that deliver articles, videos, webinars, interactive lessons or guidance.
Health learning centers play an important role as these often provide many resources to promote health literacy, help individuals to understand and manage their health more effectively and engage in community outreach. When done well, they not only empower individuals to take charge of their health, they also play a crucial role in promoting community health and wellbeing.
Given their broad reach, it is no surprise that eLearning is an often used tool by health learning centers to deliver effective and cost-effective training to a diverse set of populations and those with different learning needs and preferences.
How to build eLearning courses for health
Creating eLearning for the health sector not only involves careful planning and a structured approach, but it also requires special attention to ensure that the content complies with healthcare standards and regulations. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to create eLearning courses for health:
First identify the target audience which may be clinicians and other healthcare professionals, healthcare administrators, students, and/or the general public. Set clear and achievable learning objectives for each of your audience types.
The next step is to design a structured curriculum that breaks down the learning material into manageable units. Plan your learning paths, which is the set and order of educational resources, courses and activities that a learner needs to complete in order to achieve the learning goals. Once you know what content and the learning journey, you can decide whether you’ll use video lectures, interactive modules, microlearning, simulations, etc in your eLearning.
The next step is to create the content. eLearning authoring tools like LEAi makes it easier to use the existing documents, presentation and video recording into training content, assessment questions and microlearning. Don’t forget to use case studies to illustrate real-life applications, high-resolution images, diagrams, and infographics to illustrate concepts, quizzes, simulations, and interactive diagrams to enhance engagement and design for different learning styles.
Ensure that your course complies with healthcare standards and regulations and that you use trusted sources such as peer-reviewed journals, government health organizations, and accredited educational institutions. Collaboration with trusted healthcare professionals or subject matter experts to review and verify the content will ensure that the content is right and credible.
Once you have the content, you can now produce and publish your eLearning courses. Many Learning Management System (LMS) offer the ability to create, host and manage courses. They will track engagement, completion rates and test scores. Before going live to a broad audience consider pilot testing with a small group of learners to gather feedback and make necessary adjustments.
Once you have your initial courses, launch the course(s) to your larger audience. Increase the reach of your courses by marketing and promoting the courses through various channels to reach your target audience. This may include word-of-mouth, online and social advertising and promotion through health practitioners.
Don’t forget to collect feedback and look at the analytics to identify areas for improvement. Plan to regularly review and update the course content based on feedback, new research and changing healthcare guidelines.
Choosing an LMS for healthcare
Choosing a “health LMS” involves considering factors such as compliance with healthcare regulations, ease of integration with existing systems, and the availability of relevant content libraries. Here’s some features to consider when looking for an LMS for health applications:
- User-friendly interface – Does the LMS offer an intuitive, user-friendly interface that allows easy navigation for users of all skill levels. Ensure it also offers a responsive design for mobile learning?
- Content authoring and management – Does the LMS should allow users to upload and organize course content, create quizzes and assessments, and build learning paths based on the audience and the learning objectives?
- eLearning package upload – Does the LMS support SCORM, and xAPI (Tin Can) packages?
- Data protection and compliance – If required, does the LMS should comply to regulations like Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the U.S. and Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) in Canada to protect sensitive patient data?
- Certification tracking – Does the LMS manage and track course completions and certifications, such as CPR or other mandatory training? Also does it track and report on employees’ completion of compliance courses, generate compliance reports, and send automatic compliance reminders?
- Interoperability – Does the LMS integrate with existing systems such as HR software, CRMs or electronic health record (EHR) systems?
Some LMS providers who have health-specific solutions include Relias, Docebo, Paradiso, Tovuti Totara, and HealthStream.
LEAi – Health eLearning made easy
LEAi is a content creation tool used to create eLearning, presentations, microlearning, video scripts, and more for health training. You don’t have to be a seasoned training professional or instructional designer to use LEAi. Utilizing the power of AI and our templates, our tool ensures that the course content you create adheres to best practices for optimal learning.
Here are some examples on how to use LEAi:
| Use Case | How LEAi Helps |
|---|---|
| Compliance & Regulatory Training (e.g. infection control, HIPAA/privacy, workplace safety) | Quickly generates standardized training modules, quizzes, and assessments based on healthcare compliance requirements. Ensures consistency across facilities and easy annual updates. |
| Clinical & Procedural Training | Produces step-by-step procedure guides, scenario-based learning, and microlearning refreshers. Helps educators script realistic clinical decision points and practice cases. |
| Continuing Education / CPD / CME | Creates course content, quizzes, and case studies for professionals maintaining certifications. Facilitates fast updates when medical guidelines change. |
| New Staff Onboarding / Orientation | Builds structured onboarding programs covering hospital policies, patient safety, and clinical protocols. Speeds up content creation for HR and training teams. |
| Patient Education Modules | Generates easy-to-understand learning materials for patients (e.g., managing chronic conditions, medication adherence, post-op care). Can adapt content for different literacy levels. |
| Soft Skills & Communication Training | Develops interactive lessons and role-play scripts for topics like patient communication, empathy, teamwork, and cultural sensitivity. |
| Emergency Response & Simulation Preparation | Draft eLearning modules or scenario scripts for drills such as code blue, mass casualty, or pandemic response. Useful for blended learning with in-person simulation. |
| Public Health Awareness Campaigns | Produces digital learning content for outreach programs (e.g., vaccination, hygiene, nutrition). Enables rapid response to emerging health topics. |
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