Parental concern outperforms digital tools in identifying child’s severe illness

A parent’s intuition about their child’s condition is a significant medical indicator. A new study from the University of Oulu and Oulu University Hospital shows that even comprehensive digital symptom questionnaires may not improve assessment if the parent’s underlying concern is overlooked.

According to the study, a simple question about concern can help quickly identify most children with sudden and severe illness - supporting early clinical attention. Clear or strong concern from parents identified as many as 91 per cent of seriously ill children.

The study included 2,375 patients at the children’s and adolescents’ emergency department of Oulu University Hospital. Parents completed an extensive 36-item questionnaire before the professional assessment. Around one in four children was found to have a severe illness requiring intensive care, surgery or a prolonged hospital stay.

A key finding was that additional questions or more detailed medical information in the questionnaire did not improve the accuracy of parents’ advance assessments.

“Parental concern is an important warning sign. If a parent is worried about the condition of their suddenly ill child, the child must have the opportunity to be assessed by a doctor. A worried parent should not be left alone to make a remote assessment of their child’s condition,” emphasizes pediatrician and MD, PhD Hilla Pöyry.

The study examined whether reliable home-use tools could be developed for parents to assess the condition of a sick child. However, the extensive 36-item questionnaire did not produce a sufficiently sensitive or accurate method to replace an emergency department visit – especially in situations where the parent was already concerned about the child’s condition.

The study provides an important perspective for the health and social care discussion at a time when digital and AI-based tools are being widely introduced in healthcare services.

“Our results show that such tools require careful validation, and they do not yet replace the assessment of a healthcare professional. Although a parent may not always be able to describe the child’s symptoms in detail or accurately, they recognize a serious illness very well when asked a simple concern-based question,” Pöyry stresses.