According to a survey conducted by Skyscape a majority of surveyed professionals said "mobile handheld technology and related software titles and tools as 'critical' to their daily practice -- and reported that the solutions enabled them to reduce potential medical errors, provide greater medical care, and assist more patients."

• 84% reported that using a PDA and medical software helped reduce potential medical errors
• 88% their mobile devices helped increase their practice efficiency
• 72% reporting being able to provide more care in less time.
• 70% called their use of PDAs either "Important" or "Critical."

At one time PDAs were mainly bought and supported by individual doctors, however more hospitals and educational institutions are deploying and/or supporting the use of handheld decision support software by doctors as well as nurses, medical students and instructors.

Currently only 50% of US physicians are already using handheld devices. However, John Ryder, Vice President, of Skyscape, Inc predicts handheld technology to continue to grow due to evidence based medicine resources and the push of the EMR. "Expect the growth in handheld technology to be driven by a growing trend in evidence-based medicine, daily (if not hourly) updates in reference databases, and increased wireless accessibility," Ryder said. "Combine this on -going 'information barrage' with the coming convergence of EMR (e-medical records) and e-prescribing on handheld devices -- and we'll see more medical professionals using PDAs more often and for more uses."

From what I can tell many academic libraries have been investigating handheld technology and software, some even offer institutional subscriptions to various resources. Hospital libraries need to start thinking about this as well. Start making inquiries. If you start to notice the little wireless router hubs sprouting up around your hospital like mushrooms, talk with your IT people ask them their plans and what that means for the library and resources. After all if there will be a push for handheld devices you would want to know so that you can plan your budget ahead of time for those institutional software packages. So many times librarians are reactionary planners and not anticipatory planners.