Radiologists face growing demands for their services and expertise. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) technology is already in wide use in medicine for

• Personal Information Management: appointments, contact details....
• Patient Note Recording
• Voice Recording of comments for later transcription
• Research via wireless or other internet access using the device

Radiologists are well conditioned to adopt such technologies, as their specialty continually upgrades its own hardware to improve patient comfort, throughput and the quality of imaging achieved. The era of PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications Systems) is now upon us, offering rapid access and impressive digital tools for image analysis; however, workstations are costly and therefore, of limited availability. Cliniciansare becoming more and more demandingof access to imaging studies, as aids todiagnosis and planning of treatment, and as education aids at the bedside for both patients and medicalstudents.Radiologists with heavy administrative workloads may find themselves in transit or away from the office for extended periods. PDAs combine portability and performance to offer a solution wherein images may be stored in a portable device for later viewing. While early models sported monochrome screens and were capable of little more than basic PIM functionality, handheld devices are evolving to match the computing power of more powerful desktop PCs of just 5 years ago.

The modern PDA comprises an approximately 10cm x 6cm x 2 cm metal/plastic-cased device, dominated by a touch-sensitiveLCD display screen, but also including 4-5 key function buttons. A plastic stylus is used to interact with the device, which invariably includes a graphical user interface similar to Windows-based PCs. Most PDAs offer some form of handwriting recognition which has now reached a quite high standard.

Fig.: Front and Rear views of the XDA II PDA, which combines the versatile Pocket PC operating system with mobile phone capability.

Fig.: Casio's PDA - the user interact using the supplied stylus, applied to the touch-sensitive screen.