Utilization and Value of Personal Digital Assistants on an Epidemiology Final Examination Frank H. Lawler Jim Cacy Department of Family and Preventive Medicine University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Background: The utility of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in basic science medi- cal education is uncertain. Description: Student outcomes on an epidemiology course final examination for aca- demic years 2003 and 2004 were examined. Students were given permission to use PDAs on the final examination, and self-selected whether these instruments were used. Performance on the examination based on use of a PDA and whether students thought it was useful for the examination was compared. Evaluation: A total of 389 students took the final examination, with an 88% response rate to the survey questions. No statistically significant differences were found on fi- nal examination scores. No trends toward significance were found on analyses of the total examination, specific topical domains, or on specific questions where a PDA might be expected to be especially useful. Conclusions: From this study, it can be concluded that use of PDAs and whether stu- dents thought they might be helpful had no measurable effect on performance on an epidemiology final examination. Further delineation of the possible use of PDAs in a basic science course and on the final examination is indicated. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 17(2), 166–168 Copyright © 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Personal digital assistants (PDAs) have become commonplace for many students in higher education. Most uses appear to be for general calculator functions or for information management, such as schedules, ad- dresses, and telephone numbers. However, there are a number of databases and specialized calculator func- tions available in medical education. 1 Little literature exists on the utility of PDAs in basic science education. Most applications are for clinical education or practice or for patient tracking. 2 Examples of these applications would be PatientTracker™, Epocrates™, a pharmacol- ogy database; Five Minute Clinical Consult ® , a clinical text database; and MedCalc ® , a compendium of clini- cally applicable functions and calculations. At the University of Oklahoma (OU) College of Medicine, medical epidemiology is a 1st-year, 16-hr course that has been taught by a single member of the faculty since 1992. The instructor introduces medical and physician assistant (PA) students to the general principles of epidemiology and biostatistics and em- phasizes the core teaching objectives including re- search study design, analytic methodologies, medical diagnostic testing, and appraisal techniques for the medical literature. The application of PDAs to epide- miology instruction at OU has been primarily through the use of EBMCalc, a program from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of To- ronto. EBMCalc is a specialized calculator that is quite useful for calculations of relative risk and odds ratio and for diagnostic test evaluation from a 2 × 2 table us- ing concepts of sensitivity, specificity, and predictive value. Students were not required to purchase a PDA for the course and were discouraged from purchasing one for the sole purpose of use in this course. For the final examination for years 2003 and 2004, students in medical epidemiology were encouraged to bring a standard calculator and were allowed to use a PDA for any purpose whatsoever if they had one. For 2004, students repeatedly told that PDAs appeared not to be helpful and possibly detrimental to final examina- tion performance. Due to vociferous and strenuous protests that the PDAs would provide an unfair advan- tage because of the ability to store additional course materials and supplemental information, it became 166 Correspondence may be sent to: Frank Lawler, MD, 900 NE 10th, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, Oklahoma University Health Science Center, Oklahoma City, OK 73104, USA. E-mail: frank-lawler@ouhsc.edu