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Canadian Journal of Anesthesia 51:91 (2004)
© Canadian Anesthesiologists' Society, 2004

Correspondence

PDA’s: are we there yet?

Andrzej Con, FRCA

London, UK

To the Editor:

VanDenKerkhof et al.1 present a fascinating study into the many benefits of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in the clinical setting. I was involved in setting up a PC-based database for anesthetic interventions in a UK maternity hospital. Electronic data capture proved to be much more effective than the use of paper. However, I encountered many problems with the clinical use of PDAs and I would be interested to know of the authors’ approach to these.

  1. The synchronization process with the PC does not always go smoothly. It is noteworthy that ten sets of study data were lost through synchronization problems.
  2. The touchscreens of modern PDAs are very fragile, a colleague cracked the screen of his PDA on the clip of his pager, rendering the PDA useless. It would be naïve to assume the same level of care and attention being shown to a departmental PDA as to a personal one.
  3. Since the trial was separate from the acute pain management service round, when brought into full service, how is data transferred to the patient’s notes for the patient’s care team to review at the ward level?

I have recently worked on a maternity unit where they attempted to use a PDA for data collection, but this was discontinued due to problems one and two outlined above.

Whilst many anesthesiologists in the UK have been keen advocates of PDAs for personal use, I suspect that the technology may not yet be advanced or robust enough for institutional use.

Reference

1 VanDenKerkhof EG, Goldstein DH, Lane J, Rimmer MJ, Van Dijk JP. Using a personal digital assistant enhances gathering of patient data on an acute pain management service: a pilot study. Can J Anesth 2003; 50: 368–75.[Abstract/Free Full Text]


Related articles in CJA:

REPLY
Elizabeth VanDenKerkhof, David H. Goldstein, Jeremy Lane, Michael Rimmer, and Janice Van Dijk
CJA 2004 51: 91-92. [Full Text]  




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