Services

pda support

Welcome to the Education Resource Center's Personal Digital Assistant support page. The links above provide links to PDA resources and information about services available to BCM affiliates.

The BCM Palm project officially began in Fall 2002, with a pilot program in Longitudinal Ambulatory Care Experience, a third year course which seeks to promote physician competency in managing the medical, social, spiritual, and cultural needs of patients by combining an outpatient preceptorship with community exposure to hospice, spirituality, protective services, indigent care, and patient populations with special health care needs.

The ERC, working in conjunction with the LACE course director, assistant course director, course coordinator, and other LACE faculty and staff, proposed a pilot program to study the use of PDA applications in the LACE course. PDAs are being used in many healthcare settings to expedite and facilitate the collection and analysis of data and information. The ERC developed an application to provide electronic data input via PDAs for the following:

• Patient Observation Journal
• Checklist of Observed Skills
• LACE Patient Log

Since that initial pilot, the ERC has worked with LACE faculty to conduct two additional pilots. It also has endeavored to partner with other course directors to improve the experience of students by creating and making available educational tools that are mobile, consistent in look and feel, and interactive. By promoting the use of PDAs and then creating and distributing patient tracking applications, the ERC hopes to help prepare students to practice medicine in the coming era of mobile computing.