POCUS Focused — CME Learning Platform
A custom learning management system built to replace an off-the-shelf platform and give a physician educator full ownership of his content, brand, and student experience.
Phase 1: MVP Interface
01 The Challenge
POCUS Focused is a continuing medical education business founded by a board-certified physician and built around point-of-care ultrasound. Its existing platform — an off-the-shelf LMS — got the business to a real, paying audience. But the more it grew, the more the platform got in the way.
Course authoring was rigid. The content format they needed: heavy on imagery, short video clips, and structured assessments, didn't fit cleanly into the templates the host platform offered. Pricing and feature limits scaled in ways that started to undercut margins. And the founder didn't fully own the experience: branding, marketing pages, and core student workflows all had to bend to fit someone else's conventions.
He came to us wanting a platform that was actually his: built around his content, integrated with his business systems, and architected to grow.
02 Approach
We started with a discovery phase: we audited the existing platform, mapped the content structure, sat with the team to understand how courses are actually built and consumed, and identified the highest-leverage pieces to design and build first, before writing a line of code. The output was a prioritized roadmap that separated MVP from future phases by explicitly deferring features that were nice-to-have but not critical to launch.
A few of the decisions worth surfacing:
Authoring Experience
A learning platform lives or dies by how easy it is to put great content into it. We chose Editor.js for a block-based course builder, because this gives the educator full control over rich media integration and structured medical assessments without fighting templates.
Self-Service Marketing
POCUS Focused's business depends on landing pages converting visitors into students. Rather than having their team rely on developer involvement every time they want to publish a campaign page, we integrated Puck, a React-based page builder, that allows offers them with a no-code webpage editing experience
Data Architecture
We separated sales-facing data (HubSpot) from learning activity data (the platform itself), with internal UUIDs as the source of truth for cross-system matching. That keeps the systems loosely coupled and ensure future scalability.
Phase-based Delivery
A prioritized roadmap that separated MVP essentials, locking in the core teaching and learning loop. Future work will layer in gamification through progress mechanics, achievements, and engagement features designed to deepen learner motivation and keep students coming back to the material.
"Discovery isn't just about deciding what to build; it's about deciding what not to build yet."
03 The Work
Course Builder UI
This custom Editor.js block-based course builder experience, allows users to compose lessons with rich video, medical imagery, and custom assessments.
Learner Dashboard
A high-performance learner view designed for clarity. Lessons are tracked with real-time progress syncing to Supabase, optimized for low-latency video delivery.
User Management
Users can easily be invited to the platform, enrolling in courses, added to user groups, and tracked to make sure they're staying on top of course material.
System Architecture
We established an architecture that orchestrates the complex flow of different data to where it needs to go in order to provide the most actionable insights.
Current State
The platform is in active development. MVP launch is scheduled for May 2026, with the full Phase 1 build wrapping up in summer 2026.
"The biggest lesson has been the value of resisting feature creep. Every 'while we're at it' feature we deferred has turned out to be the right call."