Why Should I Trust You? Supporting the Sharing of Health Data in the Interprofessional Space of Child Development

Many stakeholders can be involved in supporting a child's development, including parents, pediatricians, and educators. These stakeholders struggle to collaborate, and experts suggest that health information technology could improve their communication. Trust, based on perceptions of competence, benevolence, and integrity is fundamental to supporting information sharing, so information technologies should address trust between stakeholders. We engaged 75 parents and 60 healthcare workers with two surveys to explore this topic. We first elicited the types of information parents and healthcare workers use to form perceptions of competence, benevolence, and integrity. We then designed and tested user profile prototypes listing the elicited information to see if it builds trust in previously unknown professionals. We discovered that providing information related to personal characteristics, relationships, professional experience, and workplace practices can support trust and the sharing of information. This work has implications for designing informative electronic user interfaces to support interprofessional trust.