PDAs and Handheld Devices in Healthcare: Uses and Benefits
This paper examines the role of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other handheld devices in the United States healthcare system. Beginning with a brief history of PDA development from Apple's Newton MessagePad in 1993 to modern smartphones, the paper explores why these devices have become essential in clinical settings — from managing the vast quantities of patient data to reducing medical errors, improving team communication, and lowering administrative costs. It also reviews devices currently being developed specifically for healthcare use and looks ahead to emerging trends such as wearable sensors, patient-facing applications, home monitoring, and the integration of portable devices with electronic medical records.
- Introduction: Overview of PDAs entering U.S. healthcare settings
- History of PDA Use in Healthcare: PDA development from 1993 to smartphones
- Why PDAs? Key Drivers of Adoption: Data management, error reduction, cost, and communication benefits
- Devices Currently in Use: Healthcare-specific hardware and software developments
- The Future of Handheld Devices in Healthcare: Wearables, home monitoring, and patient empowerment
- Conclusion: Integration with electronic records as next critical step
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds the argument in a clear chronological framework, moving from the 1993 Newton MessagePad through to future wearable technology, giving the reader a coherent narrative arc.
- Uses a range of cited sources across multiple disciplines (informatics, nursing, radiology, general psychology) to support claims about adoption rates, error reduction, and cost savings.
- Connects practical benefits — reduced medical errors, lower administrative burden, improved communication — directly to policy implications for healthcare administrators.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses synthesis across multiple sources to build a cumulative argument. Rather than simply summarizing each source separately, the author weaves together statistics (e.g., 98,000 annual deaths from medical error, 46% of physician time spent on administration) with qualitative claims from different researchers to reinforce a single, consistent thesis about the value of PDA integration in healthcare.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a framing introduction establishing why the topic matters to administrators and policymakers. A history section provides context, followed by the longest and most analytical section examining reasons for adoption. A shorter section covers current specialized devices, and a forward-looking conclusion addresses wearables, patient empowerment, home monitoring, and integration with electronic medical records. The structure moves logically from past to present to future.
Introduction
Handheld devices and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are being integrated into the healthcare setting in the United States. It is important to understand which devices are being used, how they are being used, what they are being used for, and why. Understanding the role that handheld devices and other portable electronics play in healthcare can help inform organizational policy and help healthcare administrators better implement electronic medical records.
History of PDA Use in Healthcare
The first documented PDA was the Newton MessagePad, issued by Apple in 1993. It was described as being "revolutionary" (Wiggins, 2004, p. 5). Palm, Inc. developed the next major handheld device — the Palm Pilot — in 1996. By the late 1990s, PDAs were equipped for Internet access, and memory capacity and other features improved with each product release. Microsoft also entered the portable electronic devices marketplace in the 1990s. At that stage, however, the devices were not yet being integrated into the healthcare system.
Since the new millennium, smartphones and other handheld devices have become standard items in both personal and professional settings. The increased power and expanded feature sets of PDAs have made them particularly effective and useful in the healthcare setting. The evolution of PDA use in healthcare shows the remarkable potential for full integration with every aspect of care management and delivery. Trends in the consumer market parallel trends in healthcare, as PDAs, tablets, and smartphones are set to surpass personal computers in overall sales (Wiggins, 2004, p. 5). Portable devices are therefore the future of medical computing.
Physicians have for many years relied on portable electronic devices such as pagers to ensure timely and quality delivery of care. Paging is now only one of many functions that a handheld computer can offer the practitioner. Radiology was one of the first medical fields to document a need for integrating handheld technology with healthcare, although medical students had already been using them for years (Wiggins, 2004). Survey results by Garrity and El Emam (2006) reveal that the majority of doctors, medical residents, and advanced practice nurses in hospitals are using portable electronic devices. Prevalence has become high and is growing exponentially because of the many uses PDAs have in the healthcare system.
References
Alerndar, H. & Ersoy, C. (2010). Wireless sensor networks for healthcare. Computer Networks, 54(15), 2688–2710.
Fornell, D. (2008). PDAs bring hand-held solutions to healthcare. Acuity Care Technology.
Garritty, C. & El Emam, K. (2006). Who's using PDAs? Journal of Medical Internet Research, 8(2).
Huang, V. W. (n.d.). PDAs in medicine. PowerPoint Presentation.
Kato, P. M. (2010). Video games in health care. Review of General Psychology, 14(2), 113–121.
Prgomet, M., Georgiou, A., & Westbrook, J. (2009). The impact of mobile handheld technology on hospital physicians' work practices and patient care. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 16, 792–801. doi:10.1197
Wiggins, R. H. (2004). Personal digital assistants. Journal of Digital Imaging, 17(1), 5–17.
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