These three names increasingly appear in the same conversations while doing almost entirely different jobs. MedAll supplies learning events and the certificates that prove them. BMJ Portfolio stores and organises evidence, for free. iatroX generates assessed knowledge records that neither of the others can produce. Compare them as rivals and the exercise collapses; compare them as layers and a rather good CPD system assembles itself.
Live educational events: MedAll's territory
MedAll is a community medical education platform hosting courses, conferences and a large catalogue of CPD-accredited webinars, much of it free, with registration and attendance certificates flowing through its app. For filling the participatory, taught component of a CPD year, grand-round-style teaching, specialty updates, cross-disciplinary sessions, it is the most accessible single venue in UK medicine, and its free tier has quietly democratised access to the kind of teaching that once required study leave and a registration fee. Neither BMJ Portfolio nor iatroX hosts live education at all; this layer is MedAll's.
Certificates and participation evidence
MedAll produces attendance certificates at volume, the classic currency of CPD files. BMJ Portfolio stores certificates from any source and tracks BMJ Learning completions automatically. iatroX deliberately competes on a different artefact: the assessed session record, performance, misses, corrections, re-tests, which documents learning rather than presence. A portfolio of certificates plus a portfolio of assessed records is far stronger than double the volume of either alone, because they answer different appraisal questions.
Portfolio storage and organisation
This layer belongs to BMJ Portfolio: free for all healthcare professionals, CPD logging from any provider, secure document and reflection storage, a dashboard of hours and deadlines, AI-supported reflection drafting within the current guidance's limits, exports for appraisal and direct integration with FourteenFish. MedAll's records naturally live inside it; so do iatroX's My CPD entries. iatroX intentionally does not compete here, and MedAll's storage is incidental to its events.
Assessed knowledge: iatroX's layer
The layer the other two cannot fill: evidence of what you actually know. Adaptive question banks across your scope of practice, the Socratic Tutor interrogating every miss, spaced re-testing verifying the correction held, askiatroX answering the week's clinical questions with citations into national guidance, and My CPD packaging it all as appraisal-ready records. In evidential terms this is the difference between demonstrating that education occurred near you and demonstrating that it changed what you know, and it is the tier appraisers see least often.
Teaching evidence: MedAll's second act
One dimension where MedAll is specifically strong deserves its own mention. Doctors who teach need evidence of it, session details, attendance, participant feedback, and MedAll's hosting tools generate exactly that: run your teaching through the platform and the feedback and certification machinery produces the supporting information your appraisal's wider portfolio wants. For trainees building educator evidence and consultants with teaching commitments, this is the platform's least-advertised, most-useful feature.
Fit by career stage
Trainees: MedAll for accessible teaching and early educator evidence, BMJ Portfolio quietly accumulating the CPD story beside the mandated training portfolio, iatroX doing double duty as exam preparation and knowledge evidence. Consultants and SAS doctors: college CPD diary as the scheme of record, BMJ Portfolio as the general store, MedAll for approved events and teaching evidence, iatroX maintaining and evidencing specialty knowledge between them. GPs: appraisal toolkit on top, BMJ Portfolio optionally beneath, MedAll filling the taught component, iatroX supplying the assessed spine of the learning file.
The stack, priced
The striking thing about this particular trio is the economics: MedAll's core catalogue is substantially free, BMJ Portfolio is entirely free, and iatroX runs a free tier with the full platform at £29 monthly or £99 annually (last checked August 2026). A doctor can now assemble live teaching, organised storage and assessed knowledge evidence for less than the cost of one traditional course, which is a genuinely new fact about UK CPD. The remaining scarce resource is the one it always was: the hour a week to run the system. Spend it where the evidence is strongest.
Frequently asked questions
Are free webinar certificates taken seriously at appraisal?
Yes, when relevance and reflection are present; a certificate's weight comes from what you did with the learning, not the fee paid for it. A free MedAll session with a sharp reflection outranks an expensive conference logged bare.
Can teaching evidence really come from a platform?
The platform generates the artefacts, attendance, feedback, certificates; the teaching remains yours. That is exactly the division appraisal wants, and it beats reconstructing feedback from email threads every spring.
What is the minimum viable version of this stack?
BMJ Portfolio as the free store, one MedAll session a quarter for taught breadth, and a fortnightly iatroX session for the assessed spine: perhaps ninety minutes a month, near-zero cost beyond the iatroX tier you choose, and a portfolio containing every evidence class an appraiser looks for.