Many electronic health record systems are built with the adult patient in mind. So when a child goes to his or her primary care doctor -- whether in the hospital or at the physician's office -- the fields in the child's electronic health record system are not pediatric-specific. For example, height and weight fields are not appropriate for newborns; growth tracking and immunization management features are not standardized; there are no pediatric-specific norm values for physicians, families and patients to use to monitor lab results, vital signs and body measurements; and privacy is not adequately defined for the child.

To improve patient safety and ensure more effective and efficient care of children, Health Level Seven (HL7), a healthcare IT standards development organization, recently passed the healthcare industry's first standard approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) that specifies the basic functional requirements for child healthcare in an electronic health record system. The HL7 Child Health Functional Profile is based upon the HL7 EHR System Functional Model, which is also ANSI-approved. HL7 announced the new standard today.

The Child Health Functional Profile defines the general pediatric functions critical for electronic health record systems that are used to care for children in the United States, including immunization management, growth tracking, medication dosing, data norms and privacy. The HL7 Child Health Work Group created the new functionality over a period of four years with support from the Alliance for Pediatric Quality, a national collaboration of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Board of Pediatrics, Child Health Corporation of America and the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions.

The Child Health Functional Profile includes electronic health record system functionality necessary to care for a child age 0-18 who receives routine wellness and preventive, acute illness, or acute trauma care that takes place in the newborn nursery, primary care provider's office, emergency room or urgent care clinic, and the inpatient hospital setting. The profile also supports ambulatory and inpatient hospital care for common chronic pediatric diseases as well as those with unusual social situations such as foster care, divided homes and state custody.