Mobile learning for clinical practice guidelines implementation: a medical app for pediatric acute gastroenteritis

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are systematically developed documents that assist healthcare practitioners in making decisions about appropriate care for specific diseases based on evidence. In this context, acute gastroenteritis (AGE) in pediatrics is a suitable model for guidelines implementation and CPGs are available and very straightforward. Unfortunately, CPGs for AGE are poorly applied and most children receive not needed interventions. Mobile learning is a collaborative form of learning that can be used as a strategy of implementation for CPGs, for its portability and spreading capacity at a reasonable cost. In this paper we describe the development of a smartphone/tablet application for physicians providing guided decision making and carrying guidelines content about pediatric AGE in order to implement the pivotal recommendations from the CPGs and to foster their diffusion.