Development of an Internet-based real-time system for monitoring pharmacological interventions in children with neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders

Few children have a 'pure' diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism. Most have complex, overlapping symptoms, and it is often these associated and common comorbidities that cause as much, if not more impairments, than the core symptoms. Prescribing decisions are therefore complex and made on the basis of eliciting a range of agreed 'target symptoms'. At present, however, there are no agreed systems that allow monitoring of all areas of potential change, and few services are able to monitor symptoms, side effects, impact on family life and individual children's quality of life systematically. At best many clinics use a plethora of paper-based standardized questionnaires, based on individual diagnoses. This article describes the development of a novel biomedical informatics system that has been designed to allow parents, professionals and children to use a web-based, real-time symptom monitoring system to enable more effective treatments, better pathways of shared care, and more equitable and efficient service delivery for this group of vulnerable children.