Sean Mikles

Child development refers to children gaining the skills they need to succeed in life, consisting of abilities in different overlapping domains such as speech, motor, social, and cognition. Developmental disabilities are chronic delays in gaining such skills, and if they are not addressed in a timely manner a child can experience negative outcome throughout their life. Responsibilities for identifying and treating developmental delays and disabilities are spread across many stakeholders in the community, including not only parents but an interprofessional collection of service providers such as pediatricians, early educators, childcare providers, providers of home visiting services, and community groups. Regardless of who is involved in a child’s care, there must be ‘no wrong door’ into the ecosystem of development support services. Unfortunately, these stakeholders operate in silos, leading to a fractured system of services that parents struggle to navigate. This often leads to delays in the receipt of necessary services and uncoordinated care. Various researchers and policy leaders such as the American Academy of Pediatrics have suggested that health information technology (HIT) could be an important tool to help stakeholders collaborate in a child’s care management. Current biomedical informatics literature, however, provides little practical guidance on how to design HIT systems to support such interprofessional collaboration.