Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are increasingly used as medical tools, especially by doctors in their training years. The Stanford PDA Project aims to integrate PDAs into medical education, preparing future doctors to use them in practice. 'The Lancet' conducted a study with a focus on preclinical training, with the goals of content creation, infrastructure development and integration, technical support, and assessment of PDAs and other mobile computing technology. The project was run by a team of medical students and the head of computing for Stanford's Lane Medical Library. Students benefited by using the PDAs as medical tools. In year 1, students were provided with PDAs and a 1 h training session to 240 preclinical medical students. In year 2, incoming students could purchase a PDA with a 60% subsidy.