Provide tailored training

• Role-specific training: Develop training materials tailored to the unique needs of each role, whether clinicians, school nurses, or other specialists. Consider their varying levels of technical expertise and medical knowledge.
• Hybrid training: A mix of in-person and online resources can accommodate different schedules and learning preferences.
• Above all else, tools should be intuitive and integrate seamlessly with doctors’ workflows. Include them as key partners in your product development and implementation.

Empower clinician champions

• Identify early advocates: Engage clinicians who are open to digital tools early on and equip them with extra training to become DHT champions.
• Peer training: Encourage champions to share their experiences and lead training sessions, making adoption feel more organic and community-driven.
• Incentives and engagement: Provide leadership opportunities, research collaboration, and continuous involvement in product feedback. It can keep champions motivated and deeply engaged in DHT use.

Integrate with clinical workflows

• Electronic EHR integration: DHTs should integrate smoothly with existing EHR systems to ensure efficient use and data sharing.
• Co-design with clinicians: Ensure that DHTs fit seamlessly into the daily routines of pediatric care providers. Involve them early in design and decision-making to minimize disruption.
• Actionable data: Present data in clear, concise formats, focusing on insights that directly aid clinical decision-making without overwhelming providers.

Build trust

• Clinical benefits: Emphasize how DHTs improve patient outcomes—such as better management of chronic conditions or earlier detection of developmental concerns.
• Share success stories: Use peer-reviewed case studies and success stories to help overcome skepticism and build trust.
• Encourage feedback loops: Encourage continuous feedback from clinicians to adapt the technology to their needs and address concerns promptly, ensuring they feel heard and supported.

Ensure accessibility

• Co-design solutions: Collaborate with patients, caregivers, and community stakeholders to design DHTs that are both functional and accessible. 
• Consider health literacy: Incorporate simple language, visual aids, and intuitive interfaces to ensure that solutions are easy to navigate for users with varying levels of literacy.
• Offer multilingual support: Translate user interfaces, instructions, and educational content into multiple languages to overcome language barriers and ensure broad accessibility.
• Improve access to technology: Consider all settings of care (e.g., home, schools) as a site of access and develop strategies to overcome barriers and ensure adequate access to devices and internet connectivity.

Ensure privacy and confidentiality

• Balance privacy and support: Implement privacy settings that respect the evolving autonomy of children as they age while allowing caregivers the access needed to support care. Educate both adolescents and caregivers about privacy rights and responsibilities.
• Confidentiality protocols: Maintain compliance with relevant laws and regulations, especially for adolescents, to ensure the protection of sensitive health information while facilitating appropriate access for caregivers and providers.

Educate and communicate with patients and caregivers

• Early education: Provide educational opportunities early in the patient journey—ideally during onboarding—to ensure that patients and caregivers feel empowered and prepared to use the DHT effectively.
• Communication channels: Use accessible communication tools like SMS, in-app messaging, or telehealth options to maintain regular contact between caregivers, patients, and healthcare providers.
• Demonstrate value: Share treatment progress and outcomes with families to keep them engaged in their child’s health journey and to build trust in the DHT’s value.
• Streamline processes: Minimize the paperwork and repetitive data entry that often burden caregivers by automating routine tasks, reducing forms, and pre-filling information where possible.

Continuity of care

• Facilitate seamless transitions: Facilitate smooth transitions from pediatric to adult care by ensuring that digital health records are comprehensive and transferable across care providers.
• Coordinate caregivers: Recognize the multiple caregivers involved in pediatric care and develop strategies for coordinating their access to digital tools and ensuring open communication.

Data protection and access

• Robust security measures: Implement strong encryption, secure authentication, and data anonymization to protect sensitive information throughout collection, transmission, and storage.
• Role-based access controls: Assign access levels based on user roles (e.g., clinicians, caregivers, patients) to balance data accessibility with security. This approach ensures that all users have access only to the information they need.
• Age-appropriate access: Design systems that transition control of health data from caregivers to patients as they reach adolescence, reflecting children’s evolving privacy rights.

Build trust through transparency

• Privacy-first development: Integrate privacy protections from the outset of DHT development, ensuring that data security is a core feature, not an add-on.
• Transparent privacy settings: Provide easy-to-understand privacy options, allowing families to make informed choices about data sharing and access.
• Accessible support: Offer channels to easily adjust privacy settings or request data deletion, making privacy management straightforward and accessible.

Leverage data for research and continuous improvement

• De-identification: Anonymize data to allow for research use while preserving patient privacy.
• Opt-in/out for research: Empower families to decide if their child’s data can contribute to research, reinforcing their control over data use.
• Clear incident response: Have a transparent plan for handling breaches, ensuring swift communication and action to protect users.
• Feedback-driven updates: Collect input from patients, caregivers, and providers to respond to new privacy and security needs.
• Proactive security monitoring: Stay ahead of emerging threats by regularly updating security protocols.
• Longitudinal data: Use DHTs to track long-term health outcomes for pediatric patients, particularly those with chronic conditions, and provide analytics that highlight areas for clinical intervention.
• Establish strategic partners: Partner with researchers to analyze aggregated outcome data, identifying trends and opportunities for public health interventions or policy changes.

Real-time feedback and iterative improvement

• Feedback loops: Establish mechanisms for collecting ongoing feedback from clinicians, caregivers, and pediatric patients, and use this input to inform updates. Consider in-app surveys for easy reporting of user experiences and suggestions, enabling continuous dialogue with end-users.
• Stakeholder collaboration: Involve pediatricians and caregivers in beta testing new features, allowing them to highlight areas for improvement before full rollout.
• Advisory groups: Form an advisory group of clinicians, caregivers, and pediatric experts to continuously assess and validate updates, ensuring improvements meet real-world needs. Involve these groups in beta testing of new features before a full rollout, allowing them to identify areas for improvement.
• Scheduled updates and patches: Implement routine updates to align with current medical guidelines, improve privacy and security, and optimize functionality.