Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 8, 2026
07:13
Digital Home-Monitoring of Patients after Kidney Transplantation: The MACCS Platform
Published on: April 12, 2021
MyMediHealth - designing a next generation system for child-centered medication management
Jason M Slagle1, Jeffry S Gordon2, Christopher E Harris3
1Department of Anesthesiology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37212, USA; Center for Perioperative Research in Quality (CPRQ), Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37212, USA.
Journal of Biomedical Informatics
|October 13, 2010
Summary
This study developed a child-centered medication management system using user-centered design. The prototype demonstrated potential for improving medication safety and adherence for children with special healthcare needs.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Health Informatics
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Medication Management Systems
Background:
- The final stage of medication use necessitates tools for patient adherence and side effect monitoring.
- Personal health records (PHR) and communication tools offer potential for medication management, but research is lacking for children with special healthcare needs.
- The MyMediHealth project aimed to explore how PHRs and applications can enhance medication safety and quality for this population.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how personal health records (PHRs) and supported applications can improve medication safety and quality for children with special healthcare needs.
- To identify requirements for a child-centered medication management system.
Main Methods:
- Employed user-centered design, including site visits, group discussions, and iterative design sessions with caregivers.
- Developed and evaluated an initial prototype medication scheduler with 202 parents using online interactive prototypes.
- Collected data through user feedback and prototype testing to inform development.
Main Results:
- A working prototype of a medication scheduling system was created.
- A text-message-based alert and reminder system was developed.
- A medication administration record system utilizing web-entered patient data was completed.
Conclusions:
- Pilot testing of the working prototype received strong endorsement from stakeholders.
- Valuable feedback was gathered for future modifications and system improvements.
- An expanded project is underway to test the system in a real-world setting.
Related Concept Videos
01:26Pharmaceutical Poisoning: Potential Scenarios
Pharmaceutical poisoning can occur through various channels, impacting an estimated 2 million hospitalized patients in the U.S. annually with serious adverse drug responses. These scenarios encompass both therapeutic uses, such as drug toxicity, where even standard dosages can lead to severe central nervous system depression, and non-therapeutic exposures, including accidental ingestion by children, and environmental and occupational exposures.Unintentional poisonings often involve exploratory...
01:26Pharmacokinetics in Pediatric Patients: Drug Excretion
In pediatric medicine, understanding the renal function and drug elimination nuances is crucial for administering safe and effective treatments. Newborns, in particular, display markedly slower renal functions than adults, profoundly affecting how drugs are cleared from their bodies. This slower drug clearance requires clinicians to extend the dosing intervals for many medications to prevent drug accumulation and toxicity while ensuring therapeutic efficacy.One key area where these adjustments...
01:26Oral Drug Delivery Systems: Continuous-Release Systems
Continuous-release drug delivery systems offer a strategic approach to maintaining therapeutic drug levels over extended periods following oral administration. By modulating the release rate of active pharmaceutical ingredients, these systems minimize fluctuations in plasma concentrations, which enhances clinical efficacy and reduces the need for frequent dosing. Such characteristics make them particularly advantageous in managing chronic diseases where patient adherence and stable drug...
01:28Dosage Regimens: Designs and Approaches
Designing a dosage regimen, which refers to the manner of drug administration, is a complex process involving the selection of drug dose, route, and frequency. This process is underpinned by pharmacokinetic parameters derived from tests and population averages. These parameters are then tailored to patient-specific variables such as diagnosis, demographics, and allergy status. Once therapy commences, therapeutic response monitoring is critical and achieved through clinical and physical...
01:29Drug Dosing: Infants and Children
Pediatric patient dosages diverge from adults due to disparities in body surface area, total body water, and extracellular fluid per kilogram of body weight. The dosing regimen considers the variations in pharmacokinetics and pharmacology across distinct age groups, encompassing preterm newborns, infants, young children, older children, and adolescents. Calculation of pediatric patient doses is predicated on determining body surface area, which exhibits a superior correlation with the child's...
01:17Pharmacokinetics in Pediatric Patients: Drug Distribution
Drug distribution in the pediatric population exhibits unique challenges and considerations due to the physiological differences between children, particularly neonates and infants, and adults. A crucial aspect of pediatric pharmacology is understanding how these differences impact the pharmacokinetics of various drugs, necessitating age-specific dosing strategies to ensure efficacy and safety.Neonates and infants have a higher total body water content, ~75%–90% of their body weight, compared...