As the Educational Computing Coordinator at Harvard Medical School, Dale Curtis is helping to facilitate a fundamental change in the way Harvard medical students and faculty exchange and access information.

The key is the palmtop computer.

The palmtop is hardly larger than a wallet but has a vaultful of features that Curtis knew would be invaluable to faculty and medical students whose rotations, classes, and appointments keep them constantly on the move. "Once students left the Harvard campus, they couldn't keep in touch. Furthermore, with students spread out over all the Harvard affiliates, they have different resources available to them," she says.

It was concern for this distance and inconsistency that led Curtis to Hewlett Packard.

She had gone to them in the past, when she worked at the University of Arizona before coming to HMS. Then she had been successful in convincing the company to donate palmtops to the Arizona medical students.

Curtis worked with Pat McArdle in the Office of Educational Development to write the initial HMS grant, using McArdle's knowledge of the curriculum and Curtis' background in technology. "Our main goal," says Curtis, "was to support students throughout their four years."

In 1994, they succeeded in obtaining 460 palmtops from HP. Daniel Federman, dean for medical education, gave HMS faculty the opportunity to submit proposals for the first course design using the computers in the classroom. Hallowell Churchill, faculty member in the Harvard-MIT division of health sciences technology, won the honor, and the first 36 palmtops went to his Clinical Medicine course. Since then, students and faculty have been developing new uses and software for the computers.

At present, the palmtop has e-mail capability, a Latin and Greek roots directory, "Outlines of Clinical Medicine" (a manual of medical problems, diagnoses, and treatments), ACP Journal Club, Lexicon drug database, and several "themes" that students encounter throughout their four years: nutrition, occupational medicine, and geriatrics.

Curtis says, "This is only the beginning." Several courses have pilot programs that use the computers, and a second HP grant awarded in June make palmtops available to HMS.

Last April, Harvard was honored by the Smithsonian as a finalist in the Computerworld Awards, which recognizes innovative uses of technology. It was especially rewarding, says Curtis, because the program at Harvard was only a year old, making it one of the youngest to be distinguished by the Smithsonian.

"It's really a breathtaking project," she says. "I thought we were going to have to convince faculty to use the palmtop-now we have so many faculty requesting palmtops, we don't have the computers to give them." But she emphasizes that she and others are doing their best to keep up. "We are actively seeking additional grants," she says. "We did not expect it to grow this fast."

-Molly Walker