Handheld PDA Research Tools in the Emergency Department
MobileDataforce is working on many mobile healthcare related projects these days. One of our customers forwarded the following article to me yesterday. It shows objective data on the value and benefit of using handheld mobile devices for data collection. Prospective, randomized evaluation of a personal digital assistant-based research tool in the emergency department BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:3doi:10.1186/1472-6947-8-3 Published: 18 January 2008 Abstract (provisional) Background Personal digital assistants (PDA) offer putative advantages over paper for collecting research data. However, there are no data prospectively comparing PDA and paper in the emergency department. The aim of this study was to prospectively compare the performance of PDA and paper enrollment instruments with respect to time required and errors generated. Methods We randomized consecutive patients enrolled in an ongoing prospective study to having their data recorded either on a PDA or a p