Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions



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CURRENT ISSUE BACK ISSUES SUBSCRIBE ADVERTISE ABOUT JCEHP FOR AUTHORS JCEHP AWARD SEARCH (Members only) FULL-TEXT		Volume 30 (1) Volume 30, Issue 1, Winter 2010 J Contin Educ Health Prof 2010; 30(1):3-10 ORIGINAL RESEARCH The growth, characteristics, and future of online CME John M. Harris Jr., Bernard M. Sklar, Robert W. Amend, Cheryl Novalis-Marine A b s t r a c t Introduction: Physician use of online continuing medical education (CME) is growing, but there are conflicting data on the uptake of online CME and few details on this market. Methods: Analyses of 11 years of data from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and a survey of 272 publicly available CME Web sites. Results: The data suggest that online CME was 6.9%–8.8% of CME consumed in 2008. If previous exponential growth continues, online CME is likely to be 50% of all CME consumed within 7–10 years. Most (60%) online CME is produced by medical publishing and education companies. The online CME marketplace is consolidating, with 16% of surveyed sites providing 76% of available credits. Currently, 70% of online CME is offered at $10 or less per credit. Most online CME uses low-technology educational approaches, such as pure text and repurposed live lectures. Discussion: Online CME use is growing rapidly and is likely to be half of all CME consumed by practicing physicians within a few years. The pattern is consistent with Christensen’s model of "disruptive innovation", whereby an innovative technology eventually displaces an incumbent technology by first providing a relatively low-quality, low-cost product that meets the needs of unserved customers. The technologies being developed for online CME may facilitate broader changes in medical education as well. Lessons for Practice Conflicting public data on the growth of online CME can be reconciled, using a calculation that adjusts for number of activities, number of physician participants, and length of an average CME activity for each type of CME format. Based on this calculation, online CME is less than 10% of the CME that U.S. physicians consume annually, but the growth rate is exponential. Within 7 years online CME is likely to comprise 50% of all CME consumed in the United States. The online CME market is being developed by commercial education companies. Trends in the development of online CME are consistent with patterns of "disruptive innovation" described in other industries
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