An mHealth Design to Promote Medication Safety in Children with Medical Complexity

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Complex Care
• Health Information Technology
• Medication Safety

Background:

• Children with medical complexity (CMC) face high risks of medication errors due to polypharmacy and complex care needs.
• Family caregivers often manage intricate medication schedules for CMC, increasing vulnerability to adverse drug events.
• Health information technologies offer a potential solution to enhance medication administration accuracy and communication for CMC.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify medication safety challenges faced by caregivers of CMC.
• To define design requirements for a mobile health application aimed at improving medication safety for CMC at home.
• To involve family caregivers, secondary caregivers, and clinicians in a codesign process.

Main Methods:

• Virtual codesign sessions were conducted with 16 participants, including family caregivers and clinicians.
• Facilitated discussions focused on identifying medication safety challenges and generating design requirements.
• The research team iteratively refined design specifications based on session feedback and recordings.

Main Results:

• Eleven medication safety challenges and 11 corresponding design requirements were identified.
• Key challenges included ensuring correct medication timing, facilitating communication, and managing complex routines.
• Design requirements were categorized into three main areas to address these challenges.

Conclusions:

• The study generated essential design requirements for a tool to improve medication safety for CMC.
• The proposed tool aims to enhance distributed situation awareness within caregiving networks.
• Future steps include piloting the tool and conducting a randomized control trial to assess its impact on medication errors.