Pediatricians and personal digital assistants: what type are they using?

Increasing attention is being focused on the potential benefits of personal digital assistants (PDA) in medical practice. Although some work has been done to investigate their use, it is still unclear what types of PDAs are being used by pediatricians, and if they are using different types in different ways. Our goals were to determine: (1) which kinds of PDAs were being used by pediatricians; (2) if the personal or professional characteristics of pediatricians differ by type of PDA they are using; (3) if the types of applications they employ differ by the type of PDAs they are using. We randomly selected 2130 pediatricians from the AMA masterfile of United States licensed physicians and surveyed them. Of those respondents that reported using a PDA, 89.7% use a Palm OS based system, 8.9% use a Pocket PC based system, and 1.4% used neither. Residents were significantly more likely to use a Palm OS based PDA than non residents (OR 6.32, 95%CI 1.41-27.53). There were significant associations between the PDA platform being used and types of applications being run on them. More than one third of pediatricians are using PDAs in clinical practice. Palm OS based systems are much more prevalent in clinical practice, and the choice of newer pediatricians.