Continuing medical education (CME) refers to a specific form of continuing education (CE) that helps those in the medical field maintain competence and learn about new and developing areas of their field. These activities may take place as live events, written publications, online programs, audio, video, or other electronic media.

According to a recent Ambient Insight article, health care represents 20 percent of the total U.S. mobile learning market. This makes health care are the largest vertical market for mobile learning adoption.

Growth trends for mobile learning highlighted in the article include:

* 18 % of 6.5 million U.S. healthcare professionals use PDAs or other mobile devices
* 55 % of 800,000 (440,000) physicians use handheld devices in their daily practice
* Physicians over age 40 are slightly less likely than their younger counterparts to be early adopters of mobile technology; 90% of physicians under age 30 use mobile devices
* 22-24% of 3 million (700,000) nurses use handheld devices; nursing related products represent the fastest growing of all mobile learning products
* Nearly all new healthcare professionals entering the workforce are experienced mobile technology users and expect to use technology in their practice
* Robust growth of mobile CME indicates it will overtake classroom and web-based CME within the next decade

“This announcement was paid for by Epocrates.”