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Personal Digital Assistants

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Abstract

Personal digital assistant sales are growing exponentially, and as medical technology advances the amount of information available becomes staggering, making a handheld device, with the ability to store a great amount of information, progressively more valuable to health care providers. Mobile computing allows for a great deal of knowledge in a small package, creating a “walking library” with a mobile collection of data always accessible. There are many diverse types of PDAs, and this article discusses the history of PDAs, general purchasing issues, general PDA features, and the most significant differences between the Palm and the Windows CE operating systems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Division of Neuroradiology, 1A71 University Hospital, 50 North Medical Drive, Salt Lake City, Utah 84132-1140, USA

    Richard H. Wiggins III MD

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  1. Richard H. Wiggins III MD
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Correspondence to Richard H. Wiggins III MD.

APPENDIX: GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS

APPENDIX: GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS

Bluetooth: short-range radio technology, usually used as a “cable replacement technology”

CF: Compact Flash

CPU: Central Processing Unit, essentially the brains of a computer

EMR: Electronic Medical Record

EPOC: PDA released by Psion, or the OS made by Psion

FSTN: Film compensative Super Twisted Nematic, type of flat-panel display screen

GPRS: General Packet Radio Service, a standard for wireless communications

GPS: Global Positioning Systems, a worldwide satellite navigational system

GUI: Graphical User Interface

Handheld PC: group of Windows CE devices that have a half VGA (640 × 240) or full size (640 × 480 or 800 × 600) screen with or without an integrated keyboard

HTML: HyperText Markup Language, authoring language of the Internet

ISP: Internet Service Provider, a company that provides access to the Internet

KB: Kilobyte, 1,000 bytes

Kbps: kilobits per second, or 1,000 bits per second

LAN: Local Area Network

LCD: Liquid Crystal Display, type of flat-panel display screen

MB: Megabyte, 1,000,000 or 1,048,576 bytes

MHz: Megahertz, one million cycles per second

MMC: Multimedia Cards

OMAP: Open Media Applications Platform

OS: Operating System

PACS: Picture Archiving and Communication System

PARC: Palo Alto Research Center

PC card: Personal Computer Memory Card International Association

PCMCIA: Personal Computer Memory Card International Association

PDA: Personal Digital Assistant

pIE: Pocket Internet Explorer

PIM: Personal Information Management

Pocket PC: group of Windows CE devices that have a quarter VGA (320 × 240) screen

RAM: Random Access Memory, place in a computer where the operating system, application programs, and data in current use are kept so that they can be quickly reached by the computer’s processor

RIM: Research in Motion, company creating wireless devices

RIS: Radiology Information System

RISC: Reduced Instruction Set Computer, a type of microprocessor that recognizes a relatively limited number of instructions

ROM: Read-Only Memory, computer memory on which data has been prerecorded

SDC: Secure Digital Card

SDMI: Secure Digital Music Initiative, specification to attempt to decrease illegal music copying

Symbian: group of Psion, Nokia, Motorola, and Erickson in an effort to produce the next generation of wireless PDA devices using the EPOC OS

TFT: Thin Film Transistor, type of LCD flat-panel display screen, in which each pixel is controlled by from one to four transistors

UXGA: Ultra Extended Graphics Array, display specification capable of displaying 1600 × 1200 resolution, approximately 1.9 million pixels

VGA: Video Graphics Array, a graphics display system developed by IBM

VPN: Virtual Private Network, a network constructed by connect nodes

WAP: Wireless Application Protocol, secure wireless specification

Wi-Fi: wireless fidelity, meant to be used generically when referring of any type of 802.11 network

Windows CE: Windows-based PDA OS

WYSIWYG: What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get

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Wiggins III, R. Personal Digital Assistants. J Digit Imaging 17, 5–17 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-003-1665-8

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