• Development of e-learning and its contribution to continuing medical education of healthcare professionals
  • Amir Hasanvand,1,* Niayesh Zivdar,2
    1. Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran
    2. Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran


  • Introduction: In recent years, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the education system in addition to the health system (HS). Since the beginning of this pandemic, educational systems around the world have been widely conducting their education in the form of e-learning and until today, this new method has replaced the previous methods. The increasing use of e-learning obliges the educational policy makers (EPMs) of the HS to benefit from this new method. Considering the importance of the role of continuous education and updating information in improving the quality of health care, this study was conducted with the aim of investigating the impact of e-learning in the continuing medical education (CME) of healthcare professionals (HCPs).
  • Methods: In this systematic review, publications were retrieved by using keywords and searching in valid bibliographic database, including Medline, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, PubMed and ScienceDirect. The language of search was restricted to English. The statistical population of this study includes all articles published until 2023. Finally, after evaluating the data quality, we analyzed a total of 21 articles.
  • Results: The findings from the study of the articles showed that the most important reason for the significant growth of the use of e-learning in the CME can be considered to be cost-effectiveness (CE). We found that reducing the cost of conducting continuous education courses, the possibility of flexible planning, reducing travel time for face-to-face training, and reducing the cost of accommodation can be counted as the main reasons for being CE. Providing the opportunity for non-attendance training and not limiting the number of participants in many courses has led to the appropriate reception of e-learning for CME, but the effectiveness and success of this method has been dependent on long-term use by HCPs. Compensating for the lack of training instructors for HCPs, quick transfer of knowledge and easy access to resources are also important achievements of e-learning in low- and middle-income countries. Also, the review of the articles of this research showed that the effect of factors such as age, race, nationality, ethnicity and gender on the effect of e-learning of HCPs has been neglected.
  • Conclusion: The results of this research show that the development of e-learning from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic until today has greatly helped in achieving the goals of CME. Based on the findings of this research, the EPMs of the HS have emphasized the use of e-learning as much as possible and consider it an effective method to improve the learning of HCPs and provide better health care. Considering the development of e-learning and its increasing use in the field of medical education, future researches will certainly increase its effectiveness by considering other factors that can be investigated.
  • Keywords: E-learning, continuing medical education, healthcare professionals