PDAs beat pagers for doctor response times, says study

Thanks to Edward Cosier for the heads up. PDAs beat pagers for doctor response times, says a new study which was published in E Health Insider. "A study published in the open-access journal BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making has revealed that surgeons at a London hospital whose pagers were replaced with PDAs combined with mobile phones responded to calls more quickly, improving communication between clinicians.

A team of surgeons at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, had their pagers replaced with Palm Tungsten W PDAs, with GPRS on the Vodafone network, for three alternate weeks out of six. Several reference textbooks were also loaded onto the devices, including the British National Formulary, as well as medical calculators."
- Sammy (Manchester, UK)