Handhelds, be it a PDA or smartphone, have made significant inroads into the medical industry. A new survey of health professionals by Skyscape, a provider of mobile medical and nursing reference solutions, shows that 85% of the 900 doctors who participated pointed to PDAs as helping to reduce the number of medical errors, with more than 50% indicating PDA use reduces their medical errors by more than 4-5%.

With the National Academy of Science – Institute of Medicine reporting that medical errors cost the healthcare system $2 billion a year, this equates to preventing more than $100 million in preventable drug errors alone. Yet less than 20% of medical professionals have their PDA software integrated with the larger hospital IT enterprise (prescription, billing, charge capture or patient records systems).

According to Skycape, respondents stated that PDA use provides significant benefits by enabling them to spend more time with patients, while still treating more each day, and by improving the overall quality of patient care.

The survey found that more than 88% of doctors use their PDAs at least four times a day, with 15% using them more than 25 times a day. When asked how they use their PDAs, 72% of doctors reported they rely on their PDA for treatment purposes—primarily using it for drug references, clinical references, drug interaction guides or hospital treatment guidelines.

In addition, almost 90% of the doctors concluded that PDAs help them provide better care, while over 85% of physician respondents agreed that by using a PDA they had decreased the number of potential medical errors. And more than 50% communicated that by using a PDA they were able to eliminate over 4% of medical errors.

When asked to quantify the specific benefits PDAs bring to their daily practice, almost 20% of respondents concluded that PDA use enables them to treat at least three more patients a day, with another 20% of respondents concluding that they can treat 1 – 2 additional patients per day.

Skyscape also found that doctors do not just rely on one reference for their PDA, as more than 70% of doctors have at least three medical references on their PDA and 22 percent have more than eight references.