Half of continuing medical education will be online by 2016

More and more physicians and healthcare managers are discovering that online continuing medical education is cheaper, more convenient, and often of superior quality to CME seminars physicians typically attend. Thus, a new study, published in the Winter 2010 issue of the Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, predicts that by the year 2016, physicians will receive 50 percent of their CME online.

In contrast to live presentations prepared by academic centers and professional societies, most online CME is provided by professional education companies and delivered to physicians at much lower cost, before even counting the time and expense saved by not having to travel.

Although only 9 percent of CME was delivered via the Internet in 2008, study authors found, using 11 years' worth of data, that online education represents a "disruptive innovation" that will continue to become an exponentially stronger competitor to the multi-billion dollar CME industry.

In 2009, a report from Babson College and a U.S. Department of Education review of 46 published studies reached similar conclusions.

To learn more:
- read this post at The Medical News

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