personal digital assistant and its future in nursing, The

Kansas Nurse, Oct 2003 by Peterson, Moya

The personal digital assistant (PDA) is the newest tool in the academic toolbox. It has broad capabilities and ultimate portability. It is a powerful reference source as well as a computer and communicator that can be stored in a pocket. Today's nursing students are not only comfortable, but also adept at managing the capabilities of the PDA. Nursing educators must become comfortable with and learn to incorporate this tool into the learning options of future nurses.

The PDA was first envisioned in the 1970s but was not a marketable item until 1996 when Palm, Inc. released the Pilot 1000 and 5000. These handheld computers retailed for about $500. The technology that developed this product mushroomed to today when the PDA is as common as the cell phone, and as necessary to many people. The retail price continues to decrease to make the PDA an affordable device. Motorola introduced a cell phone, PDA combination in 2000. Today, a cell phone, PDA and camera in one unit is not uncommon.

The use of the PDA has found a place in the general life of the public but also has become an invaluable part of many professions. The medical and nursing professions have embraced this technology as well. Due to the ease of programming of the Palm OS, many programs for use in the medical community have been developed for that operating system. Although software programs are sold, many are offered as freeware to the consumer.

In 2002 (Hunt) estimated that 18 percent of physicians were using the assistance of the PDA in their practice. At the same time, she estimated that only 1 percent of all nurses were using the PDA in their practices. Hunt asked, "Will there be a day when every nurse carries a PDA, just as they do a stethoscope?" (2002, p. 1).

Currently the PDA is used in a fairly limited manner. This is stated rather tongue in cheek, when one understands the level of technology that can now be held in the hand. The fact that this small instrument can hold millions of pieces of data boggles most minds. Many people use the PDA as a personal organizer, memo pad and phone book. They download novels and games to use in their leisure time. Healthcare professionals use it as a resource for patient care in the form of books and protocols that have been downloaded from the Internet. Some health care professionals use it to organize their patient data, track patient care visits, and write and transmit prescriptions. Another popular resource is the information that the professional can obtain about drugs, side effects, interactions and dosages. Medical calculators are also frequently used to estimate measures such as arterial blood gases, body mass indexes, laboratory values and drip/infusion rates.

It is noted that, as in the case of the personal computers, many of the owners of the PDAs use them only in the most basic of ways and do not even understand the capability of the instrument. The general public as well as the medical community is only beginning to recognize the attributes of the PDA and its impact.

One must understand the basics of the instrument before the capabilities can be tested. PDAs arc a hand held computer that has an operating system that works on one of two platforms. The 3Com company developed the Palm OS and it is a very common platform for medical resources as well as general information. It is easy to program and therefore has many programs available for the PDAs that use that system. The other operating system is the Windows CE platform developed by Microsoft. The PDAs that use this system are generally called Pocket PCs. Many users like this platform because it looks and operates exactly like the Windows program on the common personal computer. This platform is more difficult to program so the resources that are available to these users are slower in development, but are increasingly becoming more common.

PDAs were designed to work with the personal computer. But the uses are expanding by the day and now have many opportunities. Some PDAs accept data from a keyboard and most have a graffiti board where the user writes with a stylus on the PDA and it interprets it onto the screen. In the not-so-distanl future, PDAs will be able to recognize and translate verbal commands (Jenkins, 2002).

By downloading programs from the Internet by the hotsync method, one can equip the PDA to serve as the remote control for the television, sound system, DVD and VCR, lights in the house and anything that has the capability of remote control. Through the wireless technology the PDA is an access point to the Internet and personal and office email (Internet.com, 2003). Word documents and PowerPoint slides can be initiated or stored on the PDA as well. The consumer can buy numerous books, novels and games that arc downloaded to the PDA to create a compact personal entertainment center. Additional memory sticks can be purchased for the PDA so that the memory can be expanded. The user may organize the memory so that one stick is entertainment, one is for resource books, etc. This process allows unlimited memory space and capabilities.