Methodology & features
How we score clinical education platforms: binary rubric, cited primary sources, semantic proof matching, and a public capability specification.
Capabilities
30
Binary scored
Modules
7
Functional areas
Vendors
9
Release 2026.3
Scale
✓ / —
Cited or not
Scoring rule
Every capability is either cited or not — no partial credit, no inferred features.
Supported
Score = 1
Public vendor documentation with a direct URL and quotable excerpt that substantiates the capability.
Not supported
Score = 0
No verifiable primary-source proof, or marketing copy too generic to document the specific feature.
Aggregation
module = supported ÷ total in module
overall = supported ÷ 30 capabilities
Unweighted. No popularity or market-share inputs.
Evidence & evaluation
What counts as proof, and how each capability is verified.
- 1
Fetch primary source
Product pages, help centers, or API docs — never third-party reviews alone.
- 2
Semantic match
Does the excerpt substantively satisfy the capability definition, even with different wording?
- 3
Record proof
Store URL, verbatim quote, interpretive note, and match type (semantic or literal).
Acceptable
- ✓Vendor product and feature pages
- ✓Public help center or knowledge base articles
- ✓Published API or integration documentation
Not acceptable
- ×Third-party review claims without primary source
- ×Assumed capabilities based on market position
- ×LLM-generated summaries without URL verification
Proof matching
Semantic equivalence with verbatim excerpts — not keyword bingo.
Each supported capability requires a public URL and a verbatim excerpt. Proof is evaluated semantically— not by keyword matching alone.
- ·Quoted text must substantively address the definition, even when terminology differs (e.g. "affiliate network" vs "clinical site database").
- ·A short note explains the rubric link when wording alone is ambiguous.
- ·Generic marketing without a specific feature does not count.
Example citation
placement.site-directory
Click to expand — same pattern used in comparison tables.
Safeguards
Design choices that limit bias and over-scoring.
Cited evidence required
A capability scores as supported only when a public source URL is attached with a verbatim excerpt. No quotable proof, no score.
Semantic proof matching
Evidence is matched on functional equivalence to the capability definition, not exact keywords. The quoted excerpt and a brief note must substantiate the claim.
No platform-level AI bucket
Intelligent automation is evaluated within each functional module (not as a separate platform category or standalone AI module), preventing disproportionate overall credit for AI-native vendors.
No popularity weighting
Scores are derived exclusively from the capability rubric. Market share, search frequency, and brand recognition are not inputs.
Unknown capabilities score as not supported
Capabilities that cannot be verified from public documentation receive a score of not supported. The benchmark does not infer undocumented features.
Versioned benchmark releases
Each release is immutable and dated. Score changes require documented evidence updates and a new release version.
Equal evaluation methodology
All vendors are evaluated against the same feature definitions using the same evidence criteria, regardless of vendor size or tenure.
Vendor scope
Release 2026.3 — 9 clinical education management platforms evaluated against the same rubric.
Feature definitions
Canonical capability specification used for evaluation. Internal IDs are omitted from this view.
Manage multiple programs or tracks within one tenant.
Evidence bar: Public documentation of multi-program or multi-track administration.
Documented LMS, SIS, or API integrations.
Evidence bar: Public integration or API documentation.
SSO, security policies, or enterprise auth controls.
Evidence bar: Public SSO, security, or authentication documentation.
Publisher. The CEM Benchmark is published and maintained by HealthTasks. We evaluate all vendors — including HealthTasks — against the same public-documentation rubric. HealthTasks capability claims are verified against our production application and public product documentation. Other vendors are scored solely from their publicly available materials.
Methodology. Scores measure cited capability coverage from primary vendor sources (product pages, help centers, API docs) — not subjective quality, customer satisfaction, or market share. A capability marked not supported means we could not verify it from public documentation, not that the feature definitively does not exist. Capabilities without quotable excerpts are not scored as supported.
Process. This research is produced through automated AI-assisted evaluation and human review, refreshed quarterly. AI can make mistakes — we recommend independent verification before relying on these results. Machine-readable data is available at healthtasks.ai/api/cem-benchmark. Contact us to report corrections or request a vendor re-review.