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Handheld PDAs for the Practitioner Presented by: Evelyn Breck Morgen, MSLS, Associate Director, Lyman Maynard Stowe Library, University of Connecticut Health Center and Edward Donnald, MLS, Hartford Hospital Medical Library The goals of this activity were to familiarize the practitioner / educator with the various modalities of handheld personal digital assistants (PDA). Functionality and basic operating design were reviewed and demonstrated. Overview: A PDA is a handheld computer, which has expandable capability depending upon the specific model type used. PC-based PDAs (HP, iPac, Casio, Toshiba) have windows-based software and utilities. Palm-based operating systems are Palm, Sony, Handspring, Handera. Pocket PCs are only 20% of the market, whereas Palm commands the majority. Software titles are therefore limited for the PC (~180 titles) and more available for the Palm (~8,000 titles) With the use of specific software products (e.g. InfoRetriever for PocketPC, ePocrates for Palm OS, and AvantGo and Micromedex for both platforms) one is able to download off the web information from various sources. These include journals, newspapers, medical facts / handy formulas and drug databases. Currently available software/hardware hookups (Margi Presenter-to-Go ) allows you to give Powerpoint presentations from your PDA through an LCD Internet Sites of Interest: ePocrates InfoRetriever AvantGo Micromedex Margi Presenter-to-Go University of Michigan Palm-Med discussion list for physicians View a PowerPoint presentation used at this conference: "What Can You Do with a PDA?" (1741k ppt) "Powerpoint on Your PDA" (90k pdf) Summarized by F. DiMario