STUDENTS of nursing at Ngee Ann Polytechnic will be the first in Asia to have instant information at their fingertips.

About 200 of them will be toting personal digital assistants (PDAs), which will enable them to access huge databases on drugs, diseases and treatment techniques.

The money to pay for these gadgets - $200,000 - comes from the Lien Foundation.

The PDA programme follows the success of a similar $280,000 project by the Lien Foundation last year, which put PDAs into the hands of home-visit and hospice-care nurses with the Home Nursing Foundation and the HCA Hospice.

With the palm-size computers, these nurses no longer had to lug heavy paper files along when tending to patients.

Mrs Margaret Lien, chairman of the Lien Foundation, said the pilot PDA programme at Ngee Ann, which now targets the 200 students in nursing, may be extended to the School for Health Sciences after a review by the foundation six to 12 months down the road.

Speaking to reporters at the naming of the Lien Ying Chow Library and the opening of the Lien Ying Chow Gallery at the polytechnic's campus, she said the foundation's focus was on education, elder care and the environment.

The Lien Foundation was established in 1980 by her late husband, Dr Lien Ying Chow, an eminent business leader, banker and hotelier.

Deprived of education as a boy, he came to value it; he had a long association with Ngee Ann Polytechnic and is one of its founding fathers.

Last year, the Lien Foundation set up a fund named after him to provide interest-free study loans, bursary top-ups and awards for high achievers every year.