ORCID

Abstract

Acutely-ill children under five years are increasing users of urgent and emergency care with no increase in acuity of presenting illnesses. This raises concerns about parents' knowledge and confidence in assessing the severity ofsymptoms of acute illness, despite the abundance of digital information available.Method:Weco-designedtheiPoorlychildsymptomcheckerappusingexperience-basedco-designmethodology with seven parents and seven health professional patient and public involvement representatives. The prototype was iteratively developed on a no-code platform, then released for testing on android and iOS app stores for six weeks. The app was downloaded 603 times and 60% of users completed the embedded evaluation form. Results: System usability scale items were all positively scored by 91% to 53% of respondents. Thematic analysis of open text responses identified that respondents found the app easy to use and reported that it enhanced theirunderstanding 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.Conclusion: These findings show that providing parents with accessible, trustworthy information on symptoms of childhood illness increases knowledge, understanding and confidence in caring and seeking help for a sick child.The results demonstrate proof of concept for this co-developed prototype app and the iterative process of development.Implications for practice: Apps can be a powerful adjunct to information resources nurses provide for parents and should be embedded in health services for children.

Publication Date

2026-04-20

Publication Title

Journal of Pediatric Nursing

Volume

89

Issue

2026

ISSN

0882-5963

Acceptance Date

2026-03-31

Deposit Date

2026-04-21

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Plymouth, UK , through its Research & Development Solutions fund. The authors would like to acknowledge the contributes of Samatha Prime, University of Plymouth, who was involved in early work developing the prototype and the wider ASK SNIFF team for their significant contributions to the underpinning research; in particular, core team members Professor Monica Lakhanpaul, University College London UK, who previously co-led the research programme with the lead author, Professor Damian Roland, University of Leicester UK, Professor Matthew Thompson, University of Washington Seattle USA and Dr. Natasha Bayes, University of Northampton UK. We would also like to acknowledge the support from the UK Sepsis Trust .

Keywords

Acutely ill children, Evaluation, Mobile application, Parents, Prototype

First Page

91

Last Page

99

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iPoorly_symptom_checker_POC_April_2026.pdf (1204 kB)
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iPoorly_symptom_checker_POC_April_2026.pdf (1204 kB)

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