JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Providers of child and youth mental health and addiction (MH&A) services need routine measurements of patient symptoms (i.e., Patient Reported Outcomes Measures, or PROMs) to plan for and provide the right care. MH&A PROMs data are beneficial because they enable organizations to demonstrate the impact and value of the care they provide. To promote efficient and sustainable MH&A PROMs data collection, children and youth may be asked to complete PROMs at home, online, and before appointments, through digital patient portals in organizations’ electronic health record (EHR) systems. Digital portals are patient-accessible links, mobile apps, or websites, linked to individual service users’ health record systems. The portals can be used to collect, store, and display symptom snapshots or trends to help guide care, among other functions. While studies of adult MH&A service users show that routine PROMs completion through digital portals can improve care and sustain measurement-informed practices, comparable research with children and youth is nearly non-existent. Child and youth-focused research is needed because developmental factors such as reading level and concept comprehension, and caregiver involvement in PROMs completion, can affect if and how PROMs, collected through digital portals, can be useful, valid, and safe. The purpose of this viewpoint is to engage interest holders in developing best practice standards for collecting and managing pediatric MH&A PROMs in digital portals. We do this by articulating the importance of PROMs data in modern pediatric MH&A care, and describing critical considerations for interest holders that can be supported with collaboratively developed, expert-led best practice standards.