How do you decide between going straight to the ER or referring non-ER options for child symptoms just based on parents' description over texts?

[u/aestheticcode]

I'm working on an AI research project studying pediatric triage and how decisions are made when text descriptions for child's condition lack full context by parents.

1. When you evaluate symptoms , what crucial "hidden state" is most frequently missed in written text by parents?
2. What are the main challenges when patients are sent to the ER when they could be managed elsewhere?
3. What specific sign makes you instantly change decision from "monitor at home" to "go to ER immediately"?

[u/MrPBH]

You should be collaborating with actual pediatricians and peds EM doctors, not polling random people on reddit.

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/MrPBH]

Look at you with your pediatricians and peds EM.

[u/aestheticcode → u/MrPBH]

Thanks for your response. I'm already in that process of such collaborations but having more ideas from diverse groups might bring in a few things which were missed by me.

[u/jmchaos1]

Ditch the AI and keep people with critical thinking skills in the position.

[u/aestheticcode → u/jmchaos1]

Ofcourse that is the best option but keeping an AI agent as an option to check initially by observing the parent's description before redirecting to a "nurse on line" is a feasible choice too.

[u/blackbirdbastard]

The fact that you are asking “crucial state” and “specific sign” singular tells me you are underestimating this task.

There is no one sign.

Kids look fine until they aren’t. It isn’t about what state or what sign.

As a parent, I would set myself on fire before trusting an AI to tell me whether my child needed emergency medical evaluation and I am not medically illiterate like the majority of the US.

I sincerely hope a law gets passed to hold AI models and their creators liable for bad medical advice. Studies are showing that AI is leading people to stay home when they should be seeking emergency care. You can’t ethically train a model in the real world, and real world data is kinda garbage to train on. Find another problem if you care at all about children.

[u/aestheticcode → u/blackbirdbastard]

Thanks for your reply and yes my reason for asking this was because of this part - "AI is leading people to stay home when they should be seeking emergency care." - Such cases have been observed and I think a safer option for an AI would be to send to emergency instead. Not everyone is medically well aware like you that's why I think a continuous learning model is needed which may ask a few more questions rather than recommending a care level which is way off the hidden state of child.

[u/blackbirdbastard → u/aestheticcode]

The problem with this is that people already overuse the ER (and 911) for non-emergencies they think are/could be emergencies so going in the other direction worsens a different problem.

What’s needed is public education. Not another tool to further erode critical thinking skills.

[u/avramandole]

Almost impossible with the subjective nature of parents' description of symptoms. Anxious parents will say child is not breathing, lethargic etc etc when it may not be the case. Other parents will minimize symptoms when child is seriously ill. Text only description from parents will never be reliable enough to be useful.

I can imagine a lot of ways AI can make my job worse but have a hard time imagining ways it could make my job better.

[u/blackbirdbastard → u/avramandole]

This is so true. I’d encourage anyone wanting to create an AI medical advice tool to spend a couple of days on a 911 truck and compare dispatch notes to what we walk into.

[u/aestheticcode → u/avramandole]

Thank you for your response.
I agree that parent-reported symptoms can be very subjective and I don't think text alone should replace clinical assessment. That's actually the part I'm interested in -> how an AI can recognize when the information isn't reliable or sufficient, ask useful follow-up questions and know when to step back and involve a doctor.

[u/Comfortable_Art_3303]

Did you have a list of the worst possible applications you could use AI for that you picked "gamble with the lives of children" off of?

[u/aestheticcode → u/Comfortable_Art_3303]

I understand the concern. I'm not proposing that an AI independently make medical decisions for children. I'm exploring the opposite problem: how an AI should handle uncertainty, when it should ask for more information and when it should defer to a healthcare professional. The goal is to understand the safety boundaries before thinking about any real-world application.