Bioterror alerts to be tested on doctors' PDAs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. government said Friday it will begin testing a system using handheld personal digital assistants, or PDAs, to deliver urgent messages to doctors, nurses and other health-care workers in the event of a biological attack.

The three-month test will evaluate how often health-care workers download the information to their handheld devices and whether they find the system useful, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

The project will be tested with health-care workers who use a system created by ePocrates, a privately held company based in San Mateo, California, that sends alerts to more than 700,000 health-care workers, including more than 250,000 doctors, an HHS statement said.

A test messages will contain a memo about particular biological agents and Web links to information about diagnosing and treating related conditions, the health agency said. Health-care workers will be able to save the information to their PDAs for future reference.

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