Co-production of a mobile application for parents of acutely ill children under five: ‘iPoorly Child Symptom Checker

Acutely ill children under five years of age are frequent and increasing users of urgent and emergency care services despite there being no increase in acuity of presenting illnesses. This raises concerns about parents’ level of knowledge and confidence in assessing the severity of symptoms of acute illness, despite the abundance of digital information available.
Method
Building on prior work to co-develop the content for a mobile app for parents of acutely ill children, we co-designed the iPoorly child symptom checker app using an experience based co-design methodology with seven parent and seven health professional patient and public involvement representatives. The prototype was iteratively developed on a no-code platform, then released for testing on the app stores for six weeks. 603 people downloaded the app and, of these, 60% completed the embedded evaluation form.
Results
All items in the system usability scale were positively scored by between 91% and 53% of respondents. Thematic analysis of the open text responses identified that respondents found the app easy to use and reported perceived usefulness as it enhanced their understanding of symptoms of acute childhood illness, increased their confidence in caring for their child, reassured them about their child’s illness and/or helped them to decide whether or not to seek medical help. Respondents also provided suggestions for future development of the app.
Conclusion
The most powerful findings are that providing parents with easy access to trustworthy information on symptoms of childhood illness increases knowledge, understanding and confidence in both caring for, and seeking help for, a sick child. These findings clearly demonstrate proof of concept for this co-developed prototype app and the underpinning iterative process of development.