Evaluation of Mobile App to Assist in Pediatric Triage

Each ED manages a wide variety of pathologies ranging from a simple general consultation to a life-threatening emergency. Patients require prioritization and triaging as soon as they reach the ED and cannot be seen purely in the order of arrival. This triage is mostly carried out by a nurse at the triage zone who must quickly identify high-emergency patients requiring immediate care and organize their care pathway. The triage nurse uses a decision support tool known as a triage tool. In 2000, the PED of the University Hospital of Nice (France) created a 5-level pediatric triage tool - the pediaTRI - based on clinical items of inspection, interview, and analysis of vital signs. In a pediatric ED (PED) setting, a high-level emergency corresponds to a child presenting an immediate life-threatening risk that could lead to cardio-respiratory arrest or a related emergency, and thus requires rapid intervention. These patients, for whom a Level 1 or 2 is usually assigned by commonly used pediatric triage tools, can also be screened using warning scores that are predictive of clinical deterioration within 24 hours after visiting the PED. Among them, the Pediatric Early Warning System (PEWS) system, created in 2001, is considered to be efficient, easy to use, and reliable. According to the literature, the optimal cutoff level to calculate the sensitivity and specificity for admission to an ICU, defined as a high-level emergency, is ≥ 4/9. Vitals signs used to calculate the PEWS are usually collected by the nurse at the triage zone. However, new technology such as mobile application may be also used to capture those vital signs (i-Virtual). Since the parameters of the PEWS system may be evaluate by parents using the application, the investigators want to analyze their ability to assess the level of severity of their children by scoring PEWS in a pediatric emergency department using the mobile application Caducy® (i-Virtual)