Parenting Journal · Volume 2 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
Exploring the needs of children and caregivers to inform design of an artificial intelligence-enhanced social robot in the pediatric emergency department
Originally published 2023-08-24 · Journal of Clinical and Translational Science
Cambridge University Press · DOI 10.1017/cts.2023.608 ↗
AI / system type
Proposed adaptive AI-enhanced social robot; qualitative design study, no live AI intervention
Direct parenting evidenceDirectly addresses parents or caregiving, including parent studies, syntheses and audits of parenting advice.
The AI connection
Co-design concerned a future NAO system that could autonomously select adaptive support behaviors; the study elicited perceptions rather than testing that AI capability.
Why this reading matters
Makes the child and caregiver active authors of compassionate technology design instead of passive recipients of a promised benefit.
Editorial reading guide · Kindness
What would my child and I want a hospital support robot to do before we trusted it near a difficult procedure?
Lets families define what supportive robotics should feel like before an adaptive system is built. Children and caregivers discussed movement, age-appropriate language and engagement, alongside privacy, recording and technical-failure concerns. These are design preferences following real clinical experience, not evidence that the proposed AI robot reduces distress.
Study context
19 children and 11 caregivers (all mothers) recruited after intravenous insertion at two Canadian pediatric emergency departments; interviews and one child focus group.
Age / stage: Children 5–11 years; caregivers were adults
Read with three questions
- Which requested features would support a child’s comfort rather than simply hold attention?
- How did children’s and mothers’ recording/privacy concerns qualify their general enthusiasm?
- Why might a preference voiced after IV insertion differ from a child’s behavior during a live robot-supported procedure?
Keep the limits in view
Small purposive sample of English-speaking families from two urban centers, with only mothers in the caregiver group. Virtual discussion of a proposed system may not predict actual use. No AI-enhanced robot was deployed in this study and no procedural benefit, emotional safety or effectiveness was measured.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Fareha Nishat; Summer Hudson; Prabdeep Panesar; Samina Ali; Sasha Litwin; Frauke Zeller; Patricia Candelaria; Mary Ellen Foster; Jennifer Stinson (2023). Exploring the needs of children and caregivers to inform design of an artificial intelligence-enhanced social robot in the pediatric emergency department Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2023.608
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.