Parents Diagnostic Aid (PDA)

Parent’s Diagnostic Aid, a new tool to help your child
A doctor’s office with a wall to wall mothers and children can be hazardous to your child’s health. Why? It is probably one of the leading cause of medical and diagnostic errors.

About 45% of 1362 USA pediatricians, in a survey reported at the July 2010 issue of PEDIATRICS, a popular reading journal of pediatricians, made a wrong diagnosis that harmed children.
There are many reasons why a diagnosis could be wrong. One of them is a crowded waiting room. When there are many parents and children in a
waiting room, some of the medical office staff can become easily stressed, hurried, and cut corners. Such environment is fertile for medical mistakes to happen.

A physician should see a patient for 15 to 20 minutes. This means that in one day 21 to 28 children can be seen in a usual un-hurried situation. However, when there are more than 28 children scheduled, the average time spent with each sick child is reduced to less than the “ideal” time.

This will expose physicians to stress and adequate time spent with your child is cut short. Occasionally this can cause diagnostic errors. For example an eight year old boy has a chronic abdominal pain sees a doctor. To diagnose this condition, at least 17 questions should be asked in Apple App PDA (Parents Diagnostic Aid) system. However, because the time is now shorter, a physician might not be able to ask all of the critical questions and potentially miss the diagnosis during the visit.

In a child who has Abdominal Migraine, when seen by a physician who is in a hurry because of over-booking, she or he might forget to ask three important questions to make this diagnosis like: Is there any one in the family with recurrent headache? Is there nose bleeding? Or is there car or sea-sickness?

When I was in practice, I often miss the diagnosis of Abdominal Migraine before EMR.

However, with an Electronic Medical Records with 17 questions embedded in it, I was able to make the right diagnosis of children with Abdominal migraine even though I was overbooked.

Unfortunately, only 30% of physicians in the USA have computers in their examining rooms. In this current environment, medical mistakes including diagnostic errors are common happenings.

To help this situation, we created an Apple app called Parents Diagnostic Aid (PDA). In this app is a list of scripted questions for the most common problems in children like fever, chronic cough, wheezing, headache, etc. that I used in my pediatric practice at Bangor, Maine. Ideally, I think all physicians should ask all questions that should include serious conditions in their thinking radar. If these questions are not asked, a serious illness can be easily missed resulting to injury or even death.

Suppose your child has a prolonged fever. Before you visit a doctor, you can first read and answer the 12 questions under “Fever” then bring it the doctor.

With the PDA it will save the physician time in getting the clinical history and at the same time reduce the chance of missing a critical question that might lead to the right diagnosis. All of the important questions are easily available in this new Apple app.

When all of the questions about Fever is answered and “i” is tapped, a parent will have an idea of the most likely diagnosis of their child before the office visit. A parent can then ask an intelligent question during the visit. By so doing, they can be part of the medical team in the treatment of their love one.

Armed with Parent’s Diagnostic Aid now you can have a basic idea on the possible illness reducing the chance of medical errors which is happening in thousands of children being seen by a physician every day.

Medical Apps Developer’s Team

What's New In Version 2.0

We have a better navigation with new icons.

Important Physical examinations of each symptoms in an easy format to read.

Critical tests for each symptoms follow the Physical Examination.

General summary of treatment.

A reliable source of further information and treatment mentioned in the
description.