My ADHD Voice: Child Self-Report Companion for ADHD Medication Reviews
An app where children with ADHD can tell their doctor how their medication feels in their own words.
A simple app that children aged 6–15 complete before their ADHD medication check-ups, capturing how the medicine actually makes them feel — side effects, mood, school — in their own words, so the doctor hears the child, not just the parents, at every review.
Concept
My ADHD Voice is a child-facing digital companion used in the days before each ADHD medication review. Children aged roughly 6–15 complete a 10-minute, age-banded session — emoji feeling-scales, sentence starters, and audio prompts for weaker readers — covering:
- how the medicine makes them feel, day to day;
- specific side effects (appetite, sleep, stomach, mood dips);
- what is hard at school and at home;
- whether they understand and agree with their diagnosis and treatment.
The tool turns this into a one-page 'child voice' summary the clinician opens at the review alongside parent and teacher ratings, plus a version the child can see, so the child arrives as an active participant rather than a passive subject whose health is mediated through parents. Because the underlying evidence is a small qualitative study, the tool should launch as a co-designed pilot in CAMHS medication-review clinics, with validation of whether child-reported items track (or predict) medication changes.
Why now
Paper [1] — in-depth interviews with seven diagnosed children aged 6–15, their parents, and observation of practice at a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service — finds that research including children's experiential accounts is 'extremely rare', that children's own views of the diagnosis 'have not been valued', and that clinical practice positions children as passive and dependent with their health 'mediated through their parents', even though children make 'valuable and insightful contributions'. Methylphenidate is the mainstay intervention offered to children in the UK, and papers [0] and [4] stress that optimizing treatment outcomes remains an unmet goal given ADHD's heterogeneity and high inter- and intra-individual symptom variability, while [5] (European ADHD Guidelines Group) requires regular review of benefits and adverse effects. A structured child self-report captured at every review is precisely the input that guideline-mandated monitoring currently lacks.
Written by GLM · 11 Oct 2026
AI assessment
A focused, high-utility tool that fills a documented gap in pediatric clinical practice by empowering child agency in medication reviews.
- Evidence strength 4/5
- The idea directly addresses the specific qualitative finding in Paper [4] regarding the erasure of the child's voice and aligns with the EAGG guidelines for regular review of adverse effects.
- Market pull 3/5
- While there is clear clinical utility, the primary buyers (NHS/CAMHS) are slow-moving, and the value proposition is more about quality of care than immediate cost reduction.
- Novelty & moat 4/5
- Unlike the other catalog ideas which focus on objective diagnostics or monitoring, this focuses on the subjective, experiential account of the child, filling a distinct gap.
- Feasibility 5/5
- The MVP is a simple data-collection app with basic reporting, requiring no complex AI or hardware, making it highly buildable for a small team.
- Wedge clarity 5/5
- The wedge is extremely sharp: a pre-appointment 'voice' summary for medication reviews, providing a clear entry point into the clinical workflow.
- Simplicity / focus 5/5
- The product is a single-purpose tool with a clear input (child report) and output (clinician summary), avoiding platform creep.
Scored by Gemma 4 · 11 Oct 2026. Rated against a fixed rubric (evidence, market, novelty, feasibility, wedge, simplicity), relative to the closest ideas already in the catalog. A prior estimate to compare ideas before real-world signal arrives.
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Who benefits
- Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trustorganization
Oxford Health's CAMHS teams conduct regular medication reviews for children on methylphenidate; a structured child-voice summary gives clinicians the child's own report of benefits and side effects that current parent-mediated reviews lack.
- YoungMindsorganization
YoungMinds campaigns for young people's voices to be heard in their own care; a tool that systematically captures children's experiences of ADHD medication operationalizes that mission in routine practice.
- Koothcompany
Kooth's NHS-commissioned digital platform already reaches children and young people directly in an age-appropriate, low-stigma format; hosting child self-report sessions before ADHD reviews fits its youth-facing delivery model.
- NICEorganization
NICE's ADHD guideline expects children's views to be taken into account when medication is reviewed; a validated child self-report instrument gives providers a practical, auditable way to meet that expectation.
Research it builds on
- Evidence-based pharmacological treatment options for ADHD in children and adolescentsKonstantin Mechler, Tobias Banaschewski, Sarah Hohmann et al. · 2021 · 296 citationsAll ideas from this paper →
- The management of ADHD in children and adolescents: bringing evidence to the clinic: perspective from the European ADHD Guidelines Group (EAGG)David Coghill, Tobias Banaschewski, Samuele Cortese et al. · 2021 · 178 citationsAll ideas from this paper →
- An overview on neurobiology and therapeutics of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorderBruna Santos da Silva, Eugenio Horácio Grevet, Luíza Carolina Fagundes Silva et al. · 2023 · 117 citationsAll ideas from this paper →
- Children and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): a sociological explorationGeraldine Brady · 2026 · 3 citationsAll ideas from this paper →