A Tablet-PC Application for the Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP)

Approximately 2% of children from birth through 2 years of age were identified as having disabilities in 2000. To provide effective intervention services to each child is important. Children with disabilities from birth to 3 years of age who receive early intervention services have an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP). In some community early intervention programs, IFSP data are collected and stored in paper-based format, making it difficult to retrieve information in an efficient manner. Information technology strategies could address these problems, thus enhancing the efficiency of the information management. This paper discusses a user requirement analysis, design and development of a Tablet-PC computer application for collecting IFSP data for young children in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. An early prototype for the Tablet-PC computer application for the IFSP was successfully developed and a preliminarily evaluation was conducted at two early intervention programs.