The School of Medicine PDA Initiative began in fall 2001 when we distributed “Palm Pilots” to all third year students. Students loved having a PDA and, in fall 2002, we expanded the initiative and distributed PDAs to all students.

The goals of the PDA initiative are to introduce students to one of the tools they will use as physicians and to provide students with a tool that will support and enhance their educational experiences in both the pre-clinical and clinical years.

In 2005 we migrated from a Palm operating system PDA to a Pocket PC operating system. The classes of 2008 and 2009 were the first to receive the Dell Axim X50v Pocket PC running Windows 2003 Second Edition.  The built in wi-fi capability enables them to check email and access their course websites.

In 2006 we upgraded all Dell Axim X50v's to Windows Mobile 5 Operating system and purchased the Dell Axim X51v Pocket PC's for our incoming first year students.  The biggest advantage of the Windows mobile 5 OS is persistent memory, so that the pocket pc's retain all of their programs and data even if the battery runs all the way down.

Each Fall we begin the process of evaluating all available hardware platforms and the software that we preload on the devices.