Development of a Screening Instrument to Improve Access to Follow-Up Care for Children With Complex Medical Conditions: The Virtually Guided Infant Developmental Abilities Tool

The VIDA screening tool was developed to increase accessibility to neonatal follow-up care for children with complex medical conditions. The tool consists of observations of a child's developmental abilities, made through a virtual platform, that can be used by most health professionals to identify children who need further developmental evaluations. Plain-Language Summary: The authors developed the Virtually Guided Infant Developmental Abilities (VIDA) screening tool to address the lack of virtual developmental assessments. It was created in accordance with the Best Practices for Developing and Validating Scales for Health, Social, and Behavioral Research framework. Phase 1 focused on item development and content validity and involved a modified Delphi survey administered to 12 health professional experts, including occupational therapists, a physiotherapist, and a neonatologist. Phase 2 involved scale development through a pilot test with two occupational therapists and three families whose children required neonatal follow-up care. The finalized VIDA tool includes two parts: Part 1 entails an intake form to gather information on parents' concerns about their children's development, and Part 2 includes 81 items that assess gross motor, fine motor, self-care, and social communication and cognitive skills through parent-reported observations or prompted responses. Designed for use by most health professionals, the VIDA tool improves accessibility to follow-up care by enabling virtual evaluations of developmental abilities, thereby helping identify children who need in-depth developmental assessments. The VIDA screening tool offers occupational therapists a promising approach to support early developmental monitoring of high-risk infants.