PC2055: Child Health Informatics Advocacy Through National EHR Standards

Background: It is vital for electronic health record (EHR) systems to support relevant functions that improve usability, clinical decision making, and quality and safety in the child healthcare settings. Child health advocates have collectively worked together to define the specific EHR functions that support child health.

Methods: In October 2020, the HL7 Electronic Health Records Work Group launched a multi-stakeholder project that will establish an EHR standard that support child health. The HL7 Pediatric Care Health IT Functional Profile is an Informative Standard that describes the electronic health record functionality supporting child health care in the United States. It also leverages existing work published by AHRQ's Child Health EHR Format, as well as gather input from child health EHR subject matter experts within the HL7 and from the pediatric community at large. This standard also serves to complement the previous child health specific HL7 standards, including HL7 Child Health Functional Profile Release 1 (2008, 2019) and HL7 Developmental Screening and Reporting Services Derived Profile, Release 1.

Results: HL7 Standards go through a very rigorous consensus-based process. The pediatric standard was sponsored by the HL7 Electronic Health Records Work Group in October 2020. The project participants usually share a specific interest in the problems that the standard is envisioned to help address. Once approved, the project exposes the proposed standard to the whole HL7 community via the "balloting" process where the ballot content is vetted and voted on by HL7 voting members. Ballots often require a certain threshold of affirmative votes to pass and the addressed via the "ballot reconciliation" process. The consensus-based standard development process in HL7 is comprehensive and is designed to ensure that the standards that are published in HL7 have received adequate input and support by a representative group of HL7 stakeholders. The HL7 Pediatric Care Health IT Functional Profile passed its ballot voting threshold in January 2022 and is targeted to be officially published in May 2022.

The The HL7 Pediatric Care Health IT Functional Profile Release 1 contains over 600 pediatric specific functional criteria and represented both the acute and ambulatory child health care settings.

Conclusion: Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems often lack specific functions that support child health care. The HL7 standards project describes the efforts by the pediatric community's impact in the development of IT standards that define the pediatric EHR functionality. The The The HL7 Pediatric Care Health IT Functional Profile Release 1 can be used by child health practitioners to champion and optimize their EHRs to support pediatric specific workflows. Child health practitioners and stakeholders can leverage the HL7 standard to promote and adopt systems that truly represent the issues that are relevant for pediatric patients and their families.