According to this article on Mobile Health Data, which admittedly might have a stake in the PDA CME idea, using hand-held devices to obtain CME credit is catching on. A snip:
- As a working mother, Catherine Carrigan, M.D., often found it difficult to squeeze in time for her required 50 hours of continuing medical education. So Carrigan, a solo bariatric care physician based in Finley, Ohio, jumped at the chance to take some courses through a new PDA-based application from San Mateo, Calif.-based Epocrates Inc.
She's been using the MobileCME software, which was officially released in May, for about six months. During that time, she's used the application to take 12 different medical courses. The courses, which take about 15 minutes to complete, are offered by several U.S medical schools...
I love the idea of the MobileCME software because you can use it without blocking off big chunks of time," she says. "I don't have a lot of time to attend conferences or teleseminars. But it's convenient to take classes on my PDA."
According to this year's Medical Meetings Physician Survey, docs are more time-starved than ever, so a trend toward CME via PDF doesn't sound too unlikely to me. What that might mean for other types of programs, I'll leave it up to you to connect the dots...
