Towards Developing An EMR in Mental Health Care for Children’s Mental Health Development among the Underserved Communities in USA

Abstract

Next Step Clinic (NSC) is a neighborhood-based mental clinic in Milwaukee in the USA for early identification and intervention of Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children. NSC's primary goal is to serve the underserved families in that area with children aged 15 months to 10 years who have ASD symptoms free of cost. Our proposed and implemented Electronic Medical Records (NSC: EMR) has been developed for NSC. This paper describes the NSC: EMR's design specification and whole development process with the workflow control of this system in NSC. This NSC: EMR has been used to record the patient's medical data and make appointments both physically or virtually. The integration of standardized psychological evaluation form has reduced the paperwork and physical storage burden for the family navigator. By deploying the system, the family navigator can increase their productivity from the screening to all intervention processes to deal with ASD children. Even in the lockdown time, due to the pandemic of COVID-19, about 84 ASD patients from the deprived family at that area got registered and took intervention through this NSC: EMR. The usability and cost-effective feature has already shown the potential of NSC: EMR, and it will be scaled to serve a large population in the USA and beyond.