ALBANY, N.Y., Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Personal digital assistants are becoming increasingly integrated with information technology in hospitals worldwide, and in the process they are changing the nature of healthcare, but physicians and medical students alike continue to rely on old-fashioned reference sources, which they consider superior in some situations.
"Physicians, nurses, dieticians, medical students and trainees and other healthcare professionals must review an ever-increasing amount of constantly changing information about their patients several times a day, and correlate data with the most recent diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations and management options to make sound decisions," Dr. Daniel C. Baumgart, of the Humboldt University Medical School in Berlin, writes in the Oct. 1 issue of the British journal The Lancet. "Traditionally, these needs were addressed independently with separate devices, reference systems and networks."
The Lancet also reported that more than half of all physicians younger than age 35 in developed countries used a PDA in 2003.
PDAs can merge and integrate this functionality into one device that is versatile, customizable and portable, Baumgart added.
"Most doctors and most med students carry PDAs; a lot of med schools require them or give them to students (and) since the price has gone down, they're becoming as common as cell phones," Dr. Thomas Payne, clinical associate professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, told United Press International.
On the other hand, Payne continued, most doctors in hospitals also carry around cell phones, pagers and pocket reference books along with PDAs, and despite all that digital access, they sometimes turn first to the reference books, flipping to a dog-eared page for a faster determination.
"For the most part, hospitals will have wireless (Internet connections), but whether med students use them depends on if the university has wireless," he said. "Most hospitals have computers everywhere, so it depends on what information you're looking for -- looking up medication dosages and interactions is handy at the bedside of a patient, but you'd want a computer to look at X-rays or other images."
At the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, PDAs presently are not required, but many of the medical students have them, Ellen Bank, a university spokeswoman, told UPI. Consequently, the administration is moving toward wireless technology for laptops as well as PDAs, and both are being considered for integration into the curriculum, Bank added.
"PDAs are definitely prevalent in medical school," Graham Walker, a third-year medical student at Stanford University, told UPI in an e-mail message. "We're told in our pre-clinical years that we almost 'have' to have one, but my experience has been very different now that I'm working in the hospital. So far, I've used my PDA at the most five times per week, although my PDA probably holds hundreds of times more information than my classmates' pocket guides."
Walker said it takes just as much time to navigate his PDA to find the information he is looking for, and sometimes his classmates' find the information faster in their pocket reference books.
"Many of my classmates don't even use a PDA, and I don't think they're really at a disadvantage," he said, "however, this may be different once we're interns or residents and have more responsibility. Residents definitely use their PDAs more than students, but I'd say the entire staff -- from nurses to students to residents to attendings (physicians) -- prefers to just find a free computer and find their information there -- there's always enough computers around to do this."
Walker, who graduated from Northwestern University in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in social policy, said PDAs were not prevalent in college.
"I really don't feel like the handheld technology is ready for physicians; it's too slow, has a poor user interface, and the screens are just too small," Walker added. "I'd much rather walk to a computer terminal with Internet access than hunt and peck on my PDA in my pocket."
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Alex Cukan covers healthcare matters for UPI. E-mail: [email protected]
