It’s late at night and a child wakes up unwell. Perhaps with a high fever, or struggling to breathe, or with other worrying symptoms. For many parents it’s an isolating and scary time, and it can be hard to know what to do – whether to take them to the Emergency Department (ED) to see a doctor or to stay home and monitor their symptoms.  

Being able to access the care of medical professionals from home, especially after GP hours, is something that was not possible for most people, and particularly not for families who live in regional or remote communities. 

This has recently changed thanks to virtualKIDS, one of the new initiatives enabled by the NSW Centre for Child Health Services Research and Innovations (CHRIS). “virtualKIDS is a service that is provided from the comfort of a patient’s home, through video and audio assessments by specifically trained paediatric clinicians,” says Alice Fairman, Clinical Nurse Consultant for virtualKIDS. “There are a couple of different pathways through which children can access virtualKIDS: through phoning Health Direct, where, if their case is applicable, they will be put through to us for a video assessment. There is also the Acute Review Clinic, when children have been discharged from hospital and require support at home after their hospital treatment.” 

VirtualKIDS empowers parents to make informed healthcare decisions for their children – children like one-year-old Christopher, who was hospitalised with croup. “We noticed he was struggling to breathe in and was gasping, wheezing and working hard to take a breath,” says Christopher’s dad, Tim. “So, we took him to ED at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, and they admitted him for the night.”  

“They discharged him after his condition stabilised, and the next morning we received a phone call from virtualKIDS to check in.”  

While Christopher’s condition had improved at that time, that night it began to decline. Thanks to advice from virtualKIDS, Tim knew what to do.  

“At about 11 o'clock I went into his room to check on him and noticed that he was struggling to breathe again, and I remembered that the nurse we had spoken to at virtualKIDS had said that we could call back if Christopher had any worsening of his symptoms.” 

“We called straight away and had a video call with a nurse who saw some of the more severe symptoms coming back, so recommended bringing him back into hospital.” 

Christopher’s parents followed the nurse’s advice and took Christopher back to the Emergency Department, where he received additional support. Christopher was discharged soon after and then recovered successfully at home.  

“Christopher’s parents did a fantastic job in reaching out for additional support, following the guidance provided by virtualKIDS. This proactive approach is vital, as children can deteriorate rapidly, making it essential that parents feel empowered to make informed decisions at home and seek further assistance when necessary,” 
— Alice Fairman, Clinical Nurse Consultant for virtualKIDS

Tim found having the support of virtualKIDS extremely empowering. “It was really reassuring. You don’t want to be that hypochondriac parent, but you also want to protect your kids, so it was really good having that service, to get someone who's actually knowledgeable to help us make those decisions. It was very comforting to have that available to us.” 

While Christopher’s family are from Sydney and he received care at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, the CHRIS team aim to connect the dots in clinical service delivery across Australia and ensure that kids like Christopher can access world-class care wherever they are in the country, at midday or midnight.  

“What we want to do is deliver high quality care to all children, not dependent on where they live and not dependent on their race or their socioeconomic group,” says Professor Raghu Lingam, Professor of Population Child Health and Health Services Research and CHRIS Lead. “We want to be able to deliver care from Broome to Bondi that's exactly the same quality. We want to be able to do that across our nation.” 

To do this, the CHRIS team gather data and evidence about how well various programs and initiatives like virtualKIDS are working for patients, families and clinicians, and deliver evidence-based insights into what needs to change to make them more effective.  

The CHRIS team understand that a ‘one-size-fits-all' approach doesn’t work in a country as large and varied as Australia. By capturing insights from all the parties involved in a child’s care they can deliver recommendations for how to tailor the service to a particular setting.  

This involves analysing a huge volume of data and information gained from patients’ interactions with the health system – their outcomes, the clinical learnings and patient and clinician feedback –and making recommendations to improve and optimise the system to elevate service and help advance medical breakthroughs.  

The aim is to develop a system that ensures that wherever a child is in the country, they can receive the same excellent level of care in a healthcare system that is continuously learning how to improve itself.  

For Tim, knowing that the care that Christopher received could help inform and improve the care for kids across the country is an important reason to support the CHRIS project. “I think it's fantastic. knowing that something that happened to us could help someone else  is incredible. We wouldn’t want anyone to go through what we’ve been through, but if we can help other parents, that’s amazing.”   

Professor Lingam sees enormous potential in CHRIS to expand the reach of the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network’s (SCHN) excellence to kids across the country. “The Sydney Children's Hospital Network is the biggest provider of paediatric services in the whole of the southern hemisphere. We want to be able to be groundbreaking in terms of how we deliver care to children and young people. We want to be the centre of excellence across the whole country.  Your support, can help  change the way that paediatric care is delivered for all children.”

Donate to Sydney Sick Kids Appeal and help the CHRIS team continue their work to ensure that all kids nationwide can access the same standard of world-class care, wherever and whenever they need it.