Pros and Cons of Medical PDAs

The personal digital assistants are now being incorporated in to medical education and settings. Medical students and doctors refer to these devices as their personal medical assistants that help them to perform a variety of medical tasks with speed and convenience. The disadvantages and advantages of these devices are listed below. Please comment based on your experience with this technology.

Advantages:

• Hold a library of medical information
• Help manage your patients
• Access medical records of patients with in a matter of minutes
• Manipulate medical data
• Control your calendar and to-do lists

Disadvantages:

• Can be very expensive
• Is considered to create less personal doctors as it decreases patient-doctor contact
  
• Some do not easily merge well with all Microsoft desktop applications
• Certain ones are very large and thus it is less comfortable to carry around
• Some devices do not contain all of the medical software that are available