A healthcare content authoring software platform incorporates a healthcare education content authoring assistant software with interactive suggestion interface to assist a healthcare education content author in creating computerized healthcare education contents. The interactive suggestion interface in the healthcare education content authoring assistant software provides at least one of a symptom selection interface, a symptom characterization and medial exam description entry interface, a pivotal concept definition interface, a results group configuration interface, a disease summary interface, a disease epidemiology interface, an etiology task exploration interface, and a tests diagnostics strategy and pitfalls interface, wherein one or more of these interfaces empower the healthcare education content author to create, update, and manage a plurality of diagnostic reasoning pathways that encourage students and healthcare industry trainees to nurture basic linear DDx reasoning skills, dynamic DDx reasoning skills, and other clinically-empirical reasoning skills in a simulated patient diagnostic environment with a virtual patient.