If a smartphone breaks or is lost or stolen, the information stored on it may be gone if you don't have proper backups. If you have a PDA, contact information is readily accessible even if your phone is inoperable. Some people like their PDAs, finding them to be excellent tools to stay organized, take notes, store phone numbers, manage to-do lists, enjoy entertainment, and keep track of a calendar. The reality is that PDA development has come to a halt, and it may be only a matter of time until the PDA is just a memory.
Smartphones, with a combination of internet and Wi-Fi access as well as cellular communication capabilities and a range of apps, aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance.
Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Jennifer Johnson. Updated on July 22, Tweet Share Email. Android Switching from iOS. From a random sample of US pediatricians in , PDA users were most likely from urban communities [ 30 ].
However, by , rural use In Canada, this trend continued in , with Five surveys considered PDA use in both a professional and personal context; 17 studies exclusively captured professional use. One study reported general prevalence rates for PDA use among pediatricians; however, it did not specify if use was in clinical practice or outside of work.
In order to discern professional use more closely, we explored administrative PDA uses versus direct use in clinical patient care. Other reported clinical PDA uses included access to medical references, patient tracking and patient reminders, clinical decision pathways and managed care applications, telemedicine, and diagnostic imaging or radiology applications.
This paper summarizes the results from surveys examining adoption of PDA use. These survey data are in reasonably good agreement and suggest a sizable proportion of physicians use handheld devices.
However, most of the sources of survey data did not distinguish well between types of applications being used most often and whether the PDAs were being used professionally for administrative purposes or for direct clinical work.
It is encouraging to note that our findings are similar to those of an analysis of online registrations and downloads of a PDA drug reference guide, which concluded that approximately one fifth of US physicians and half of medical students in the United States were PDA users [ 40 ]. Our grouped survey data suggest that there is little information on the PDA usage rates among nonphysician health care providers.
However, collectively, these data suggest that use of handheld devices has become a subject that health care professionals need to know about. By systematically gathering this usage information, it is difficult to deny the prevalence of PDAs in health care. With this basic understanding of current handheld usage patterns, we need to consider the impact of this development of mobile handheld technology on both practice and research.
According to a commonly accepted descriptive model of the diffusion of innovations developed by Rogers, when the cumulative rate of users of a new invention is plotted versus time, the result is an S-shaped curve [ 41 ]. Interestingly, this appears to be true of most technological innovations, irrespective of the technology. For example, Hall and Khan reviewed the S-shape adoption patterns of a variety of 20th century consumer products eg, washing machines, video cassette recorders [ 42 ], while Teng et al developed historical diffusion curves for information technologies eg, personal computers, email [ 43 ].
Variations in diffusion slopes do exist given that some technologies will diffuse more rapidly than others. Health care information technologies have also been examined within this diffusion framework. England et al studied organizational and technological factors determining the rate at which innovations diffuse in the health industry [ 44 ]. In , RAND Health completed a report characterizing the diffusion of electronic health records along an S-shaped adoption curve [ 45 ].
Technologies typically go through multiple phases during their adoption life cycle, which may last for many years [ 41 , 46 ]. The characteristics of the adopters change over time and so does the nature of suitable evidence to inform their adoption decisions.
For example, innovators the first 2. Early adopters the next The S-shaped diffusion of technology curve [ 41 ]. The increase in PDA adoption means a potential reduction in hardware and training costs when using handheld devices in the provision of care and in research.
Because of the high probability that target health care professionals may already have a handheld device and will already know how to use one, the overall hardware purchase costs could be reduced, and the end user will not necessarily have to be trained from scratch.
To date, use of PDAs in health care appears to have preceded extensive evaluative research. PDA adoption rates, already high, continue to be a moving mark with projections for rapid growth in the short term.
By comparing handheld device diffusion to other health information innovations, and by placing PDA use within existing diffusion models, we are able to better predict the future of handheld growth in health care and therefore develop more timely and appropriate evaluative research to accompany such growth.
Unfortunately, we were unable to include information from two national physician surveys. These report findings are similar to our overall findings in this present review.
The second national physician survey not incorporated into our analysis was the Canadian National Physician Survey NPS , which provides valuable insight into what information technology, including PDAs, physicians and specialists have in their main patient care settings [ 15 ]. However, overall prevalence rates could not be determined from the data provided given the manner in which they were presented. Nonetheless, in reviewing the national data, we can descriptively draw some conclusions.
First, it appears as though male physician PDA use is higher than that of females. This appears to be consistent across all tasks involving PDA use although differences do appear to be small. This is consistent with our general findings in which males are only marginally more likely to use a PDA than are females.
Interestingly, when examining age-related data from the NPS, it appears as though the age factor may in fact be PDA task-specific. For example, electronic health record usage appears to decrease as the age of physician users decreases. However, PDA use for drug interaction information increases when the age of the physician user decreases.
This appears contrary to most other surveys that show younger age is associated with higher general PDA use. Perhaps what this information tells us is that handheld use may be more complex when broken into task-specific strata. It is worthy to note that, with the exception of one survey focusing on nurse practitioner students, little mention was made in the surveys of PDA use by students across health care disciplines, including medicine.
Several universities in Canada and the United States now mandate use of PDAs for medical undergraduate students and residency programs; therefore, it is assumed this could potentially affect prevalence rates. However, because none of the included surveys examined mandated use, we are unable to infer if this is responsible for recent increases.
However, this raises an important issue to be considered in future studies related to students and rates of handheld adoption. To better understand the prevalence rates among the included surveys, it became important to categorize the drivers for PDA use as either professional or personal. We therefore attempted to discern what specific PDA tasks the respective health care professionals were performing.
This was done by classifying, whenever possible, the use as administrative versus care. On the surface, it would appear that administrative and organizational tasks on a PDA exceed those related to patient care, perhaps signaling where the growth in adoption is most likely to occur.
In this present review, we can only speak broadly to rates of adoption and patterns of use. Drawing inferences from the survey data was often limited by lack of, or differences in, operational definitions in aspects of handheld use being measured. For example, the term use was often not defined by frequency eg, specific units of time—day, week, month.
Taking these issues into consideration would be a useful exercise for future surveys as well as information technology prevalence studies in health care. In conclusion, physicians are increasingly accustomed to using a PDA, and, therefore, technology expertise will not likely be a barrier to deploying handheld applications.
There is an urgent need to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of specific tasks using PDA technology eg, implementation, searching, reference, data entry, reporting to inform those persons developing and those using handheld applications. Furthermore, it is not clear why there is a paucity of evidence on the extent of adoption of PDAs by other health care providers: is it that they lag in the use of this technology or is it simply that they have yet to be studied? This review has a number of limitations.
Issues around response bias and inability to draw causal inferences weaken survey methodology. It may be the case that those surveyed feel a stronger affinity to the survey sponsor, who has a greater interest in the questions asked, or are in complete disagreement with the topic at hand. This can skew results in difficult-to-measure ways. Quite possibly, the nonrespondents are the least committed ie, nonusers of PDAs.
As a result, the critical objective of drawing a true random sample of the populations that are the focus of the survey is compromised and the findings somewhat impure. The reported methodologies across these surveys appear to be heterogeneous, which limits their comparability. As noted, the quality of the included surveys could not be determined given the absence of validated quality assessment instruments, and, therefore, there was no adequate way to assess the influence of bias.
A related issue is that some of the included surveys did not go through a rigorous peer-review process.
These combined issues made judging the strength of the evidence not possible. One would assume surveys identified from scientific journals would be a source of less biased information. However, in defense of the nonacademic surveys, there is a consistency in results between those peer-reviewed versus those that were not.
This may suggest that our main conclusions regarding adoption rates are fairly robust and not disconnected even with the inclusion of non—peer-reviewed evidence. The objective of this study was to determine the adoption rates of PDAs in health care settings, and to project expected adoption in the future based on established technology diffusion models.
Younger physicians, residents, and those working in large and hospital-based practices are more likely to use a PDA. Professional use in health care settings appears to be more focused on administrative tasks when compared to those related to patient care, although this requires further study. Additionally, the impact of PDA use on practice appears to be immediate in terms of costs and training.
Familiarity will not likely be a barrier to deploying handheld applications in health care. However, there is a critical need to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of specific tasks using handheld technology within the health care system and across health care provider PDA user groups.
The authors would also like to acknowledge Dr. The authors would also like to extend a thank you to Ms. Tiffany Richards for providing assistance with data extraction. Additional database search histories are available upon request from the authors. Conflicts of Interest: Khaled El Emam is a co-founder of and has financial interests in TrialStat Corporation, a software company that develops electronic data collection tools for mobile devices.
National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. J Med Internet Res. Published online May Reviewed by Stephen Lapinsky and James Barrett. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Corresponding author. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Objectives The objectives of this study were to estimate current and future PDA use among health care providers and to discuss possible implications of that use on choice of technology in clinical practice and research.
Methods This study was a systematic review of PDA usage surveys. Results We identified 23 relevant surveys, 15 of which were derived from peer-reviewed journals. Conclusions Younger physicians and residents and those working in large and hospital-based practices are more likely to use a PDA.
Keywords: Personal digital assistant, systematic review, survey, health care, health technology adoption. Introduction A handheld computing device, also commonly known as a personal digital assistant PDA , is a mobile computer about the size of the palm of the hand. Methods For the purposes of this systematic review of surveys, the term PDA is used synonymously to refer to any handheld device. Data Sources Surveys were identified as a subset selected from a broader systematic review examining all studies related to handheld devices in health care settings.
Electronic Search Strategy The intent of searching the biomedical databases was to retrieve all studies related to handheld devices in health care. Eligibility Criteria Surveys were included for this present review if they met the following initial criteria: related to an application in human health care and involved the use of a PDA device; contained original data; written in English not including abstract or conference proceedings ; published after ; and specifically reported handheld usage rates prevalence of PDA use as a metric in populations of health care professionals who were surveyed about the extent of their PDA use.
Selection Process The selection process for this present survey review consisted of two phases. Open in a separate window. Figure 1. Data Abstraction The contents of each included survey were abstracted by one reviewer CG , with an additional research assistant providing verification TR.
Analysis The data from all included surveys were extracted in a predefined, standardized fashion with abstraction verified by a second person and assessed descriptively Appendix 2.
Results From a total of full-text articles that underwent relevance assessment for a systematic review of the literature examining broad-ranging PDA use in health care, a subset of 18 surveys reporting PDA prevalence rates were identified see Figure 1.
Table 1 Included surveys. However, for this present review, the authors were unable to obtain a full copy of the report in spite of having contacted Manhattan Research on two separate occasions February Survey Characteristics The included surveys were published between and , with survey data collected between and Figure 2. Students and Medical Residents Residents tend to be younger, therefore it follows that they are more likely to use PDAs.
Gender PDA usage among men and women was equal in a survey of internists [ 19 ]. Professional Use Five surveys considered PDA use in both a professional and personal context; 17 studies exclusively captured professional use.
Discussion This paper summarizes the results from surveys examining adoption of PDA use. Figure 3. Limitations This review has a number of limitations. The personal digital assistant PDA as a tool for telementoring endoscopic procedures. Garrett Bernard Mark, Jackson Cathryn. A mobile clinical e-portfolio for nursing and medical students, using wireless personal digital assistants PDAs Nurse Educ Today.
The use of personal digital assistants at the point of care in an undergraduate nursing program. Greenfield Sue. Medication error reduction and the use of PDA technology. Can Fam Physician. Knowledge in the Palm of your hands: PDAs in the clinical setting. Health Info Libr J. Design and evaluation of a personal digital assistant- based alerting service for clinicians.
Evaluation of a handheld clinical decision support tool for evidence-based learning and practice in medical undergraduates. Med Educ. The use of handheld computers in scenario-based procedural assessments. Med Teach. Technology induced error and usability: the relationship between usability problems and prescription errors when using a handheld application.
Handheld computers in critical care. Crit Care. A survey of PDA use by palliative medicine practitioners. J Palliat Care. Randomised controlled trial of clinical decision support tools to improve learning of evidence based medicine in medical students. Why don't physicians use their personal digital assistants? Survey assessment of personal digital assistant use among trainees and attending physicians. Assistive computing devices: a pilot study to explore nurses' preferences and needs.
PDA usage and training: targeting curriculum for residents and faculty. Fam Med. Drug information resources used by nurse practitioners and collaborating physicians at the point of care in Nova Scotia, Canada: a survey and review of the literature. BMC Nurs. Tracking clinical use of personal digital assistant reference resources. Nurse Educ. Price Morgan. Can hand-held computers improve adherence to guidelines? A Palm Pilot study of family doctors in British Columbia.
Use of personal digital assistants PDAs in reflection on learning and practice. J Contin Educ Health Prof. Clinician use of a palmtop drug reference guide.
Personal digital assistants change management more often than paper texts and foster patient confidence. Eur J Emerg Med. Ruland Cornelia M. Handheld technology to improve patient care: evaluating a support system for preference-based care planning at the bedside. Doctors' experience with handheld computers in clinical practice: qualitative study. User satisfaction and frustration with a handheld, pen-based guideline implementation system for asthma.
The use of personal digital assistants by nurse practitioner students and faculty. J Am Acad Nurse Pract. Personal digital assistants PDAs : barriers but opportunities.
Patterns of use of handheld clinical decision support tools in the clinical setting. Med Decis Making. Telecare delivery of health and social care information. Strawderman Lesley, Koubek Rick. Quality and usability in a student health clinic. Support Center Support Center. External link. Please review our privacy policy. Search was done with Medical Subject Headings MeSH and with the text words computers handheld, PDA, personal digital assistant, microcomputers, handheld computers, computers, handheld, mini computers, pocket PC and palm pilot, single and combined with nurse, nursing, medicine, physicians, healthcare, healthcare personnel, health personnel or students.
Search was done with Subject Headings computers-hand-held, computers-portable, microcomputers and health-personnel, nurses, physicians, students, interns-and-residents. Search was done with Medical Subject Headings MeSH minicomputers, microcomputers including computers-handheld and with the text words handheld-computer, PDA, microcomputer, minicomputer, mobile-device, health, care. Search was done with the text words handheld-computer, mobile-device, minicomputer, microcomputer, PDA, health, care.
Search was done with the text wFords handheld-computer, PD and, health-care. Total relevant references before excluding duplicates. Relevant references after excluding duplicates for abstract screening. Large and well accomplished multi-center study with sufficient descriptions of protocol, material, and methods.
Well defined questions at issue, sufficient sample size and adequate statistics. Large and well defined consecutive sample analyzed with adequate statistics, long follow-up. Small sample size, indistinctly described, follow-up too short, or inadequate statistics. Well defined questions at issue. Insufficiently defined questions at issue, selection indistinctly described. Ammenwerth et al [ 14 ] Germany.
Participants found needs for mobile computer implementation in clinical routine. Aziz et al [ 15 ] UK. Test if a PDA with built-in mobile telephone is more efficient in facilitating communication between health care providers than a hospital pager device. Physicians equipped with a PDA rather than a pager, responded more quickly to a call and had a lower of failure to respond rate.
Barrett et al [ 16 ] USA. Most residents use PDA daily. Berglund et al [ 17 ] Sweden. Describe nurses and nurse students demands of functions and usability in a PDA. With a PDA, the nurses and nurse students expect access to information about the patients, knowledge resources and functions for their daily work. Berner et al [ 18 ] UK. Determine whether use of a PDA would improve emergency medicine documentation of procedures and patient resuscitations. Sedation, thoracentesis, and ultrasound documentation significantly increased with PDA vs handwritings.
Bosma et al [ 20 ] Canada. Team members adopted the new technology with few problems and the service can now efficiently be analyzed. Examine the success of intervention of PDAs by comparing PDA use and user attitudes between residents of intervention group and residents in control group. Applications most often used were the address book and drug databases. Determine the percentage of paediatricians using PDAs and computers, as well as the perceived strengths and weaknesses of PDAs.
Chan et al [ 23 ] Hong Kong. Evaluate use of an electronic barcode system in PDA for patient identification during blood transfusion. No incidents of blood transfusion to wrong patients, or wrong labelling of blood samples occurred. Chang et al [ 24 ] Taiwan. Develop PDA support systems for mass gatherings and evaluate ease of use and usefulness. The PDA system included many information items and was easy to use and useful for mass gatherings.
Choi et al [ 25 ] South Korea. Evaluate the uses of handheld computers in family practice residency programs in the United States. Dee et al [ 27 ] USA.
Examined how frequent attending physicians and physicians in training used PDAs for patient care. Determine PDA use on an academic health sciences campus to define the level of training and support the library can provide. Doran et al [ 29 ] Canada. Develop an electronic information gathering and dissemination system to support both nursing-sensitive outcomes data collection and evidence-based decision-making at the point-of care.
Most priorities were information concerning vital signs, drug information, and manuals of policies and procedures. PDA users show a higher mean score compared to the control group.
Fischer et al [ 31 ] Canada. Evaluate the feasibility of incorporating handheld computing technology in a surgical residency program. Galt et al [ 32 ] USA. Compare drug information sources for PDAs, to minimize medication errors. Lexi-Drugs were found to be the most specific and complete PDA resource. Gandsas et al [ 33 ] USA. Compare the ability of surgical residents to identify anatomical structures displayed on a standard monitor versus a PDA screen.
Design, implement, and evaluate a PDA-based e-portfolio tool to support reflective learning in practice. Goldsworthy et al [ 35 ] Canada. Findings showed a significant increase in self-efficacy in the groups with PDAs. Greenfield [ 36 ] USA. Determine whether nursing medication errors could be reduced and nursing care provided more efficiently using PDA technology.
Results for accuracy and speed were significantly higher in the PDA group than in the control group. Greiver et al [ 37 ] Canada. Explore whether diagnostic software in the PDA would improve care for suspect angina. A PDA-based software application can lead to improved care for patients with suspect angina. Honeybourne et al [ 38 ] UK.
Study impact of PDA on patient care to identify how often and which resources were used, as well as barriers to use in patient care. Participants used PDA in clinical setting to support evidence-based practice and education. Johnson et al [ 39 ] USA. Most users reported that they learned about new medical developments sooner than they otherwise would have.
Johnstone et al [ 40 ] Hong Kong. Evaluate the usefulness and acceptability of PDAs loaded with clinical decision software. The students found the PDA useful.
Kneebone et al [ 41 ] UK. Evaluation of a PDA-based rating form, observations, and focus group interviews. The PDA forms were easy to use. Kushniruk et al [ 42 ] USA. Certain types of usability problems were closely associated with the occurrence of specific types of errors in prescription of medications. Lapinsky et al [ 43 ] Canada. Evaluate benefits and drawbacks associated with introducing PDA technology in an intensive-care unit.
PDAs were found to be convenient and functional, but more comprehensive training and improved searching capability were suggested. Lau et al [ 44 ] Canada. Understand the current patterns of PDA use among physicians working in palliative medicine. The PDA was mostly used to organize a practice and look up medical references. Leung et al [ 45 ] Hong Kong.
Lu et al [ 46 ] USA. Four barriers were identified: organization, usability, inadequate technology support or access, and lack of need or motivation. McAlearney et al [ 57 ] USA. Users seemed generally satisfied, the device helped them increase productivity and improve patient care. McLeod et al [ 47 ] USA. Investigate PDA use in medical settings, use prevalence, user demo-graphic, and hardware preferences.
Medical students reported more frequent PDA use in hospital settings and for direct patient care than physicians. Mihailidis et al [ 48 ] Canada. Determine what assistive computing device features and functions nurses need.
Data analysis revealed a strong desire to facilitate information access and administer safe medication. Morris et al [ 49 ] USA. Use of PDAs was common.
Murphy et al [ 50 ] Canada. Determine the frequency of use, usefulness, accessibility, and credibility of PDA, computer, and print drug information resources. The use of PDAs and computers remains limited. Pattillo et al [ 51 ] USA.
The nursing students used their PDAs to look up words and unfamiliar terms, drugs, and the meaning of laboratory values. Price [ 52 ] Canada. Examine whether using Palm Prevention improved adherence to 5 preventive measures in primary care.
Ranson et al [ 53 ] USA. Information for clinical decisions, patient education and teaching was used and the use was associated with the value of information. Rothschild et al [ 54 ] USA. Evaluate the clinical contribution of a drug database, usage patterns, decision making etc.
Physicians reported time saving during information retrieval and improves decision making. Rudkin et al [ 55 ] USA. Ruland [ 56 ] Norway. Shiffman et al [ 58 ] USA. Three users gave strongly positive ratings while six users were neutral. Stroud et al [ 59 ] USA. Describe the prevalence and patterns of PDA use among nurse practitioners, students, and faculty. Teolis et al [ 60 ] USA.
Determine what health professionals perceived as barriers to PDA use and how frequently participants used their PDAs for online searching. PDAs electronic information and software at point of care, users give users access to a wide variety of also experienced multiple barriers.
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