Office of High Performance Computing and Communications, Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland 20894, USA. fontelo@nlm.nih.gov
Two recent parallel developments, the widespread deployment of wireless networks and increased use of handheld devices like the personal digital assistant (PDA), have contributed to the development of mobile access to the Internet. Recent surveys show that approximately 25% or more of physicians use PDAs. Although used mainly for personal information management and static medical applications, PDAs have capabilities to connect to the Internet. We studied the use of handheld devices to access MEDLINE and other knowledge sources in a wireless setting.