Digital Transformation in Healthcare Professions Education: Key Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

Digital transformation is rapidly reshaping healthcare professions education, offering unprecedented opportunities to enhance teaching, learning, and assessment. Advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and gamification are enabling educators to deliver more personalized, immersive, and engaging learning experiences. At the same time, innovative pedagogical approaches like flipped classrooms and blended learning are redefining the traditional boundaries of classroom-based education. Despite these exciting developments, challenges remain in implementing digital solutions effectively, ensuring accessibility and equity, and rigorously evaluating their impact on learners and patient outcomes. Exploring these transformations is critical for educators, policymakers, and institutions seeking to prepare healthcare professionals for an increasingly complex and technology-driven healthcare environment.

This Research Topic aims to highlight the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in digital transformation for healthcare professions education. We seek to stimulate discussion, showcase innovative approaches, and provide evidence-based insights to guide the effective integration of digital technologies into teaching, learning, and assessment practices. Special emphasis is placed on the necessity of robust IT support and teacher education to ensure successful implementation and sustainable impact.

We invite manuscripts exploring diverse aspects of digital transformation in healthcare education, including but not limited to:

• Artificial Intelligence & Adaptive Learning: Personalized learning platforms, AI-driven tutoring, and assessment analytics.

• Flipped Classroom & Blended Learning: Innovative approaches that combine online and face-to-face teaching.

• Virtual Reality (VR) / Augmented Reality (AR) Simulation: Immersive simulations for clinical skills, procedural training, and anatomy education.

• Learning Analytics & Educational Data Dashboards: Data-driven insights to inform curriculum design, learner feedback, and competency tracking.

• Gamification & Serious Games: Engaging digital tools that enhance motivation, critical thinking, and skill acquisition.

Submissions addressing implementation challenges, equity considerations, and evaluations of effectiveness are also highly encouraged, particularly those highlighting the role of IT support and teacher education in enabling successful adoption of digital innovations.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: digital transformation, healthcare professions education, medical education, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, flipped classroom, blended learning, gamification, serious games, learning analytics, teacher education

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.