PassMedicine is one of the default banks for UKMLA AKT preparation, and deservedly so on volume and price. But the numbers its dashboard shows you are practice statistics, not measurements of readiness against the GMC's content map — and with the updated map taking effect from September 2026, the difference between "my percentage is rising" and "my coverage matches the blueprint" has never mattered more. This audit is for final-year students and international graduates deciding how far to trust the dashboard.
What PassMedicine offers for UKMLA right now
As of 19 July 2026, PassMedicine sells UKMLA/MLA preparation on its standard model: a large single-best-answer bank at low fixed-term cost, revision and timed modes, textbook notes, and analytics with peer-comparison histograms. It does not advertise an LLM tutor or a machine-learning adaptive engine — the "engine" is the practice loop you configure through filters, repeats and mode choices, plus the analytics that describe it. We could not verify UKMLA-specific question counts or pricing on the audit date, so check both on the product page; its MRCP Part 1 product, for calibration, lists 5,100+ questions at £35 for four months, and the UKMLA offer follows the same low-cost pattern.
The exam behind the dashboard
The Medical Licensing Assessment has two components: an applied knowledge test — delivered as the MSC AKT through UK medical schools, and via PLAB 1 for international graduates — and a separate clinical and professional skills assessment (CPSA). The AKT is built on the GMC's MLA content map, and here the date matters: the GMC updated the map in January 2026, with the updated version applying from September 2026, organising assessable content into areas of clinical practice, patient presentations and conditions — 212 presentations and 430 conditions in the updated listing, which we have catalogued in full in our content-map breakdown.
The consequence for Q-bank users is blunt: the AKT samples from a defined, published universe. Your preparation question is not "is my percentage good?" but "how much of the mapped universe have I actually met?" — and that is a coverage question your dashboard does not natively answer.
Metrics, translated
First-attempt accuracy on unseen items is the dashboard's only exam-shaped number, because exam day is one attempt on unseen material. Repeat accuracy rises with familiarity whether or not knowledge is growing; treat it as a review-process metric, never a readiness metric. The peer percentile compares you with a self-selected population of PassMedicine users at unknown stages of preparation — motivating, occasionally, but not a pass forecast, particularly in the MLA era when the candidate population spans UK finalists and PLAB-route IMGs with very different baselines. Coverage counts attempts, not understanding, but it is the raw material for the only audit that matters (below). Time-per-item catches the failure mode accuracy hides: knowing medicine at a pace the paper does not allow.
Selection bias: the dashboard measures your choices
Every filter you set biases every statistic you see. Practising your weakest systems (diligent) deflates your average; drifting to comfortable territory (universal) inflates it; repeating errors (good pedagogy) inflates repeat accuracy while predicting nothing. A percentage generated under self-chosen conditions is not comparable with a mixed, unseen, timed block — and only the latter behaves like the AKT. This is the standing argument of Your Q-Bank Percentage Is Not Your Exam Score, and the MLA's defined content map makes it concrete: an inflated average over a narrow slice of the map is the single most common false comfort in finals-year revision.
The content-map audit
Fortnightly, set your attempted-question distribution against the map rather than the app. Three checks. Breadth: which of the map's areas of clinical practice have you barely touched? Mental health, child health, and the perennially under-revised corners — dermatology, ENT, ophthalmology — reliably surface here. Presentation coverage: the AKT thinks in presentations (the breathless patient, the confused older adult) as much as diagnoses; question filters organised by specialty can leave presentation-level reasoning under-rehearsed. Professional content: ethics, law, consent, safeguarding and prescribing safety carry real weight in the MLA design and are precisely what specialty-filtered clinical practice under-samples. Five minutes with your stats page against the map beats any amount of dashboard-watching.
What a credible readiness signal requires
All five conditions: unseen questions, exam-pace timing, mixed composition across the map, no mid-block look-ups, and a sample of at least 100 questions over multiple sittings before a percentage means anything. Anything else — filtered blocks, repeated items, untimed browsing — is learning activity, valuable but unmeasurable as readiness. If your school sits the MSC AKT, its published format is your pacing target; build blocks to that rhythm.
When to override the selector
Force the map's neglected corners on a rota, because low-volume domains generate few questions in any self-directed feed. Force presentation-mixed blocks that cut across specialty filters. Force prescribing-safety and data-interpretation items if your mix lacks them. And force full random timed blocks weekly — the closest a bank gets to the exam's indifference to your preferences. Comfort is a selection algorithm too, and it is optimising the wrong objective.
A worked dashboard example
Eight weeks from your AKT, suppose: overall 66%; cardiology 75% over 310 attempts; respiratory 72% over 260; psychiatry 54% over 70; paediatrics 58% over 85; ethics/law 12 attempts; dermatology untouched; timed-block pace averaging 82 seconds per item.
Translated into next week: cap the strong systems at one maintenance block; give psychiatry and paediatrics the largest quotas (120 questions between them, explanations read); open dermatology and schedule ethics/law properly rather than incidentally; and address pace with three timed blocks — 82 seconds per item is a finishing-under-pressure problem the AKT will punish. Rising overall percentage appears nowhere in that plan; map-aligned quotas are the entire output.
A seven-day pattern — including for IMGs
A workable week for a finalist or a PLAB-route international graduate balancing content review with UK exam conventions: Monday, 50 PassMedicine questions across two flagged weak systems. Tuesday, 30 questions plus focused review of UK-specific conventions the map assumes — NICE-first management sequences, UK prescribing safety, safeguarding thresholds — the highest-yield territory for IMGs whose clinical knowledge outruns their UK-context calibration. Wednesday, a timed 50-question unseen mixed block in iatroX's free UKMLA bank, where adaptive selection deliberately probes related weaknesses across the map rather than repeating your history. Thursday, light error review. Friday, 40 PassMedicine questions on map-forced domains. Saturday, a full timed simulation block, alternating source weekly, reviewed same-day by error type. Sunday, rest. Each platform holds one job: PassMedicine for volume and explanations, iatroX for unseen adaptive measurement — no proprietary-algorithm claims required on either side.
The content-map era changes what "coverage" means
It is worth being explicit about why this audit leans so hard on the map. Before the MLA, "have I covered enough?" was an unanswerable question — the syllabus was implicit and every bank drew its own boundaries. The GMC content map changes that: the assessable universe of presentations and conditions is published, which means coverage is now a checkable fact rather than a feeling. That is a gift, and most candidates waste it by continuing to revise against their instincts instead of against the list. The discipline the map rewards is boring and decisive — periodically set your attempted distribution against the published areas, find the ones you have barely met, and force them. With the updated map applying from September 2026, this also means confirming which version governs your sitting, because a candidate revising the wrong map is thoroughly covered for the wrong exam. The platforms that will serve you best in this era are the ones whose own coverage maps cleanly onto the GMC's; the audit question for any bank, PassMedicine included, is no longer "how many questions?" but "how completely does its coverage correspond to the map I am actually accountable to?"
Continue, supplement, switch or stop
Continue while unseen mixed performance climbs and the map audit levels out. Supplement when bank numbers rise but unseen performance stalls — recognition, not learning. Switch only for a named, measurable gap (our ranked UKMLA bank comparison exists for that decision); novelty is not a gap. Stop accumulating volume in the final fortnight once coverage, stability and pacing criteria hold — the marginal mark then lives in timed simulation and error review, not in question one-thousand-and-one.
Frequently asked questions
Is PassMedicine enough for UKMLA on its own? It can supply the bulk of AKT practice volume affordably, but it cannot measure your coverage against the GMC content map or your performance on unseen timed material, so pair it with a map audit and an independent source of unseen mixed blocks — and remember the CPSA is untouched by any Q-bank.
Which UKMLA component does PassMedicine not reproduce well? The content map's enforced breadth — professional and ethical content, presentation-level reasoning and the low-volume specialties — and the exam's unseen, timed, mixed delivery; specialty-filtered practice inside any bank systematically under-rehearses both.
How many PassMedicine questions should I complete per day for UKMLA? Composition beats volume: 40–60 map-directed questions on study days is ample, provided two timed unseen mixed blocks are protected weekly; beyond that, additional volume usually displaces the review and simulation work that actually moves scores.
When should I stop using PassMedicine and move to mixed mocks? When your map audit shows every area attempted above your floor, first-attempt accuracy has held for two consecutive weeks and pacing sits within the paper's budget — then spend the final two to three weeks on timed simulations with the bank demoted to error review.
How should I combine PassMedicine with iatroX without duplicating practice? Split the jobs: PassMedicine for chosen-domain drilling; iatroX — free for UKMLA — for unseen, timed, adaptively selected blocks that measure transfer across the content map, plus the Socratic Tutor when a miss needs reasoning repair rather than a repeated attempt. The practical sequence is drill-then-prove: work an area in PassMedicine until its explanations add nothing new, then confirm it with an unseen iatroX block, so your progress is always measured on questions your own filtering did not choose.
Editorial notes and references
Written by Dr Kolawole Tytler, NHS GP and founder of iatroX. Last checked 19 July 2026; the MLA content-map update (January 2026, applying from September 2026) is per the GMC's published pages, and PassMedicine details are vendor-published — verify current counts and prices before purchase, and confirm which AKT sitting and map version applies to you. Disclosure: iatroX operates a free competing UKMLA bank. Corrections via the feedback route on iatrox.com. References: GMC MLA content map (gmc-uk.org); MSC AKT student handbook (medschools.ac.uk); PassMedicine product pages; related reading: the definitive UKMLA revision guide and how to revise for the UKMLA AKT.