BOSTON – A project funded two years ago by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has successfully deployed a patient-centered kiosk technology called ParentLink at two Massachusetts hospitals.

The project measured the completeness and accuracy of information on symptoms, disease conditions, and allergies of four common conditions – ear infections, head trauma, asthma and urinary tract infections.

Parents provided the information via ParentLink kiosks in the ER at Boston’s Children’s Hospital and South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass. It was measured against information documented by clinicians.

The project’s principal investigator was Stephen Porter, MD, a pediatric emergency medical physician at Boston’s Children’s Hospital. Porter and his colleagues are evaluating the data parents provide by comparing it to data recorded by physicians to see where gaps in information most often occurred.

The trial enrolled more than 1,400 parents for one year.  A case study released by AHRQ revealed that initial data from the trial shows that the information provided by the parents was used in the emergency department more than 90 percent of the time.

The first draft of the study was recently submitted to the American Pediatric Academic Societies 2007 Spring Conference, to be held in Toronto. Porter identified three potential communities that they will be trying to reach for publication over the next few months – informatics, emergency and pediatrics.

When parents can provide eight of the 10 pieces of information needed when their children arrive at the emergency room, the parent becomes the “driver for the medical process,” Porter noted.

Parents who entered information into the kiosk during the study had agreed to be a part of the trial, but hospitals are “not to the point where every parent will accept” and this may depend on how “critically dependent” the information is, Porter added.

In the case report, Porter said he was encouraged by parents’ reactions to the technology. He said it would be interesting to evaluate if the technology saved time compared with paper documentation. ParentLink is “an example of a communication process that has been under appropriated and developed,” he said.