Technology Consolidation in Health Professions: Finding the Right Fit
New technology often enters a health professions program for a good reason. One platform handles learning, another supports assessments, and others manage clinical experiences, portfolios, curriculum, or reporting. But as those systems accumulate, so do the handoffs, integrations, and workarounds needed to keep them running.
That growing complexity has become a priority across higher education. In its 2025 Top 10 report, EDUCAUSE ranked Administrative Simplification as the #2 issue, emphasizing the need to streamline and modernize institutional processes, data, and technologies.
But successful consolidation isn't simply about having fewer systems. It's about finding the right technology ecosystem for the work that needs to happen.
Consolidation Doesn't Have to Mean One System
Counting applications is tempting. Moving from ten systems to five looks like progress, but not necessarily if those five make the work harder.
Health professions education has specialized requirements, and some technologies will continue to make sense as standalone solutions. Consolidation might mean retiring overlapping tools, reducing vendors, improving integrations, or bringing related functions together within a shared platform.
The pressure to revisit technology investments is real. A 2025 EDUCAUSE QuickPoll found that 33% of respondents reported their institutions had already renegotiated technology solution contracts or licensing to reduce costs, while another 27% were planning to do so.
Rather than asking, "What can we eliminate?" a more useful question may be: "Where would consolidation create meaningful value?"
Look for Connections, Not Just Duplication
Duplicate functionality is an obvious place to start, but some of the greatest opportunities may exist between technologies that perform different—yet closely related—functions.
Consider how an assessment relates to a competency, or how a clinical experience connects to curriculum objectives and a learner's progress. These are distinct activities, but the information they generate shouldn't exist in isolation.
When systems don't share information, people become the integration layer. Administrators transfer data, faculty navigate multiple platforms, and program leaders piece together information to understand learner performance or meet reporting requirements.
Bringing related functions and information closer together can reduce that friction while providing a clearer picture of learning across settings. That's a more meaningful outcome than simply reducing the software inventory.
Start With the Ecosystem You Have Today
Before deciding what should change, programs need to understand what they're already using.
Our advice here comes from a past webinar we offered on the topic of how to consolidate a technology portfolio: start by inventorying existing technologies, including their purpose, users, ownership, costs, and renewal dates. Then map how information moves between systems, where manual processes exist, and which integrations or dependencies are essential.
Bring faculty, learners, administrators, and IT teams into the conversation. A tool that appears redundant from one perspective may support a critical workflow elsewhere.
Look beyond functionality to consider actual usage, administrative effort, integration costs, and the potential disruption of replacing a system.
The goal is to identify where consolidation would remove complexity, rather than simply move it somewhere else.
Keep the Learner Journey at the Center
Cost, licensing, governance, and security are all important considerations. But health professions programs have another essential lens: the learner journey.
Learners move between classrooms and clinical environments, completing assessments, receiving feedback, and developing competencies along the way.
Can faculty see relevant evidence of progress without searching across multiple platforms? Can administrators produce meaningful reports without reconciling spreadsheets? Can learners connect feedback from different experiences?
These are practical measures of whether a technology ecosystem is working.
Not every function needs to live in one system. What matters is being intentional about where integration adds value, where specialization remains important, and where fragmentation creates unnecessary work.
Building a More Connected Technology Ecosystem
Elentra brings curriculum management, learning management, assessment and evaluation, clinical experiences, competency-based education, portfolios, learner progress, and reporting together within a shared platform.
The value isn't simply having those capabilities available in one place. It's being able to keep information connected across the learner journey, supporting clearer oversight, more informed decisions, and less administrative effort.
Ultimately, successful consolidation isn't measured by how few systems remain. It's measured by whether the technology ecosystem makes it easier for learners, faculty, and administrators to do the work that matters.
If your institution is looking to simplify its technology ecosystem without compromising the specialized needs of health professions education, Elentra can help. By bringing essential educational functions and information together, we help programs reduce fragmentation, streamline workflows, and create a more connected experience for everyone involved. If you'd like to learn how Elentra can help your institution build a more efficient, integrated technology ecosystem—contact us today.