Vet students trial mobile technology

Students at the Royal Veterinary College are using smartphones to take video, view diagnostic images and access research while in the field - quite literally.

The college displayed their myPad project at the launch of their new £4.5 million Lifelong Independent Veterinary Education (LIVE) centre in Hatfield today.

The pilot project, which began in November 2006, has 30 students trialling smartphones and a bespoke database platform, designed to help record and process information from their hands-on training.

The pilot is sponsored by Orange, which has donated the handsets - 15 M3100 SPV and 15 M500 SPV smartphones, which both have large screens and full keyboards - as well as technical support and data transfer costs.

While tablet PCs were considered, the team chose to use smartphones because they were small enough to fit in a pocket but have screens large enough to display diagnostic images. "You can't have a huge, scary thing sticking out of your pocket when you're dealing with animals," said final-year student Adam Mugford.

Project member Kim Whittlestone said the students were told to view the devices more as portable computers than phones. "They're really more hand-held computers," he said.

Before myPad, students tracked their cases and research the old-fashioned way, in notebooks. "My notes are sort of disorganized and you can't search them," said Mugford. He described one case, involving a seeing eye dog named Happy. While following Happy's treatment for knee problems, Mugford used his smartphone to keep track of MRIs, radiographs and video of the surgery, as well as his own notes. "It aids recall and lets me look back and see exactly what happened," he said.

The internet-enabled phones also allow students to cross-reference their notes and check research right away while working with animals. "I was working in a practice and looked something up," said Mungford. "The vet saw what I did and said 'I wish I had one of those.'"

The tool helps Mugford in particular for another reason. "I'm dyslexic, so it records all the long, difficult words I can't spell and displays them when I'm typing them in," he said.

Although the devices and database have been mostly popular among students, notebooks are difficult to top, said Whittlestone. Not only are they easy to use, but there's no startup time. "Plus, if a cow stood on this," he said, indicating a notebook, "or you dropped it in a puddle, it'd be alright. But the PDA, what do you reckon?"

So far, none of the devices have met such dismal fates. "We're interested in any problems, to see how well they work in the field," said Whittlestone. "There've been none reported so far."

He noted that students have wisely left the devices behind when dealing with trickier cases, such as dehorning. Mugford added: "You get bashed around and bruised sometimes - even pens get broken."

Because the data is uploaded to the college's server, a student's work won't be lost if the device is damaged. A few students reported problems with the smartphones crashing, frustrating if someone is midway through an unsaved report.

But it's not just about note-keeping, said Whittlestone. "We want to transform the way they learn," he said. "There's so much information, how can students cope? They get information overload. This encourages a more effective, efficient mode of learning."

Orange is hoping to learn a few things along the way as well. "We do a lot of work in public sector, but we're learning here," said an Orange spokesperson. "We can take a lot away from what they learn... it's a completely different user group with very unique needs."

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