computer application implemented in healthcare

The Use of PDA 's in Health Care

Knowledge management in health care refers to the organization of and easy access to important know-how , whenever and wherever it is required (Pasupathy , 2006 . And , the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA ) seems to be doing a perfect job of helping health care organizations and medical professionals manage knowledge in the palm of their hands . No wonder the health care industry has emerged as a leader in adopting the PDA which is an application of mobile and wireless technology to manage a tremendous amount of data within

hospitals and clinics (Havenstein 2005

The history of the PDA in health care systems may be described in the following timeline

1980 : Psion defined the PDA for the first time 1984 : Psion launched the first handheld organizer , which was slightly longer and thicker than a large cigarette pack 1993 : Apple launched its own PDA for the first time 1995 : US Robotics acquired Palm Computing , which led to the launch of the Palm Pilot 1996 : The Pilot was finally launched by US Robotics 1997 : Apple produced a new PDA by the name of eMate Palm Pilots became major players in the PDA market after US Robots was acquired by 3Com 1999 : Palm began to lead the industry (Vanessa and Shroff , 2007 2000 : Medical practitioners began using the PDA in huge numbers 2004 : One survey of 34 health care organizations revealed that 80 percent of them are using PDA 's or plan to begin using them within a year 2005 : A new survey of 253 health care executives revealed that 54 percent of them would be using PDA 's (Havenstein 2007 : A survey revealed that 40 of clinicians in the United States are now using the PDA (PDA Causing Medical Revolution , 2007 .With a PDA , a medical practitioner or nurse has access to all the patient information that he or she would need at a given time . Besides doctors and nurses may download onto their PDA 's all of the medical knowledge they would ever require , for example , the downloadable American Academy of Pediatrics asthma guidelines . The information in the palm of the medical practitioner 's hand today may further consist of medical journals and encyclopedias downloaded onto the PDA . Another important piece of downloaded data on the PDA is billing information about inpatients and outpatients (Torre and Wright , 2003 . In short the PDA is the answer to the prayer of every medical professional . A PDA is a lightweight , durable , safe to use , low power equipment , that does not interfere with other medical equipment in use by a doctor or nurse . What is more , the PDA does not involve any monthly charges . It is like a personal computer that any medical doctor may own (PDA

Dr . Darrick Nelson (2005 ) is an assistant professor of family medicine , director of curriculum and head of medical information systems at the Corpus Christi Frostily Practice Residency Program in Corpus Christi Texas . According to him , the PDA is an extremely powerful tool in the...