Guide to PDA (Handheld and Palmtop Computing Resources) for Health Care Professionals 

The advantages of using a PDA are many. If programmed it an work a slave unit to the main ward or hospital computer. This means you don't have to run to the computer every time when you are on rounds and need to check the lab results or order medicine from Pharmacy or x-rays from radiology department. The time so saved can be better utilized for patient care and increases the overall working efficiency of the staff. The advantages of PDA are innumerable, to name a few they include:


1) PDA as bedside reference material
2) PDA for Drug references
3) PDA For Diagnostics reference values 
4) PDA to refer to clinical guidelines or protocols
5) PDA as Medical word or picture dictionaries
6) PDA to check Lab values 
7) PDA to order drugs from pharmacy 
8) PDA to use for explaining to patient's or their relative about a procedure or condition
9) PDA for education of student nurses. 


Specialists recommend that at least 8 MB of memory (RAM) should be available for use in the clinical setting. In the future, even this may not be enough. You should also look for expandability, preferably with an industry standard card (i.e.- flashcards type 1 and 2). To date, of the Palm OS, the Visor is expandable, but only by purchasing Visor memory (Sony also has a expandable model, it uses only Sony memory). The TRG pro is the first of the palms to have an industry standard flash card slot. It can even hold IBM's 1 GB card. This gives a huge amount of potential storage space at a reasonable price (much cheaper than Visor or Sony). As with Visor and Sony, you cannot run applications from the extra memory card. However, as most nurses will be using the Palm for reference material and for tracking patients. You can store multiple references in the flash card and access them easily. Plus you can back up your whole palm device onto your flash card. If your battery goes dead, or your Palm crashes, it is easy to retrieve your lost data