Digital paediatric growth charts App

Online Children’s height-weight, BMI and blood pressure centile calculator

Update: Anyone keen to use the Children’s Growth Chart calculator that tracks growth over time can now register and start using the App. Activation link and User ID will be sent by Email (please check your spam folder if need be). Log on, Register a patient, click Care Record > Phy Exam tab, and add your measures. Download our quickstart guide for the Digital Paediatric Growth Charts and you are good to go.

_{Fair use policy, T&C apply, 30-day free use, extended at the discretion on request for individual clinicians or payment of nominal fees as appropriate for group practices.}

We are excited to share here a pioneering piece of innovation that is as yet rarely if ever available and integrated within Electronic Health Records globally, let alone India. At best there are a couple of web calculators that come close, but they do not track patient records over time and work only in a silo.

Why use digital growth charts in children?

As a part of working with children and young within Paediatric Services and Child & Adolescent Mental Health Settings, it is necessary to monitor a child’s Pulse, Blood Pressure, Height, Weight, Body Mass Index, etc. 

It is often not recognised that raw scores of the above parameters do not approximate those of Adults and need to be converted to Centile data which is more meaningful, especially under the age of 18. Below we have two children, pre-pubescent and second one in early adolescence, as seen below, simply going by the Body Mass Index as we do with Adults will lead to erroneous interpretations. If we go with BMI child 1 would be healthy at 28kg and child 2 would be healthy at 55kg. Yet at these weight’s their %weight for height (W4H) is 145% and 122% when ideal body weight range is 95% to 105%. A much lower weight of 18kg and 43kg equals healthy weight for these children. Also note that the App calculates 100% ideal body weight, not shown here the app also works out 95% and 105% estimates for current height, age, gender of the child to provide guidance on the healthy range.

In our Application, we calculate the BMI centiles and in addition provide % weight for height (i.e. % median BMI). The latter is far more valuable as the weight should be in line with the child’s current height (which is determined by parental heights rather than 50th centile lines shown on the charts).

While currently 2-3 applications online may provide the above information, none record longitudinal data, the Patient-Tracker does this over time. It would be thus useful for paediatricians, general practitioners dealing with medical causes affecting growth. The App would also benefit psychiatrists who work with ADHD and /or Eating Disorders.

The App in addition supports percentile calculations of head circumference (age 3 months to 5 years) as well as Blood Pressure (age 4-24 years).

To help with the above, clinicians usually plot raw data on charts and then work our rough centiles for the above parameters. This can be time consuming, costly due to need for printed papers and filing and prone to errors.

We have developed an interface that quickly does all of the above and more as a part of the Electronic Health Records in India Project, the video below is a brief demonstration of the work we have done in making use of EHRs clinically meaningful and in a manner that these systems add value to the primary objective of effective patient care.

For more information and collaborating with us in using the tools we have developed to enhance care and make it safer, please drop us a line.