Pediatric fluid therapy calculator mobile application (PFTC)

Abstract

© 2017 Association for Computing Machinery. Calculation of fluid therapy is one of the most important aspects of treatment for pediatric patients, especially newborns. Highly accurate computation of fluid intake must be performed for appropriate medication. Patients who are treated by fluid therapy with intravenous substances or through the gastrointestinal tract generally receive medicine in form of injections, oral medicine and other substances including food and milk et al. Ability to calculate accurately in monitoring fluid therapy for pediatric patients has become an important skill for pharmacists. Normally, to perform fluid therapy calculation, a calculator together with a comparison chart and specific criteria from text books or formulas for calculation fluid therapy injections are required. This traditional practice is inappropriate at the point of care for rapid calculations for volume replacement in a true pediatric emergency. This research aims to develop a mobile application to calculate fluid therapy in pediatric patients, called Pediatric Fluid Therapy Calculator (PFTC). Holliday-Segar equation was applied to develop the algorithm for calculation. The application consists of four main functions: patient information management function, quick fluid therapy calculation function, alarm/allergy medicine notification function and information transferring function. The application was evaluated by experts and users using a questionnaire in order to measure the application performance in terms of quality and satisfaction which the result of both were satisfied. The proposed PFTC mobile application can be used to rapid calculate fluid therapy in pediatric patients for assisting medications or clinical practice.