Using AI to Integrate Parents’ Insights Into Pediatric Psychiatric Care

Dr. Mariela Mosheva, Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department at Sheba’s Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, approaches pediatric psychiatric care according to a simple observation: “Parents know their children better than anyone else.”

In Sheba Psychiatry‘s Ward D – Israel’s only closed pediatric psychiatric inpatient unit located within a general children’s hospital, which is also headed by Dr. Mosheva – the clinical team treats some of the most complex cases in pediatric mental health care. There, families are not simply consulted about care but are active participants in shaping it. As Dr. Mosheva puts it, “I believe firmly in shared decision-making; treatment is not something we do to a family, but something we build together with them.” 

Through experience, Dr. Mosheva and the ward’s physicians, nurses, and educators have come to understand that parents are able to provide deep insights into a patient’s development and behavior across countless situations that can be used to inform treatment. However, they found that systematically incorporating that firsthand knowledge into each care plan remained a challenge.

Where AI Fits In

Artificial intelligence offers one way to address this challenge. Parental reports are often rich in detail, but incorporating that information into the structure of care alongside clinical observations is not always straightforward in daily practice. 

AI helps streamline that process, organizing and analyzing what parents report at scale and identifying where a caregiver’s account and that of clinicians align or diverge. Agreement between the two can strengthen confidence in a diagnosis, while discrepancies may point to an aspect of the child’s experience the ward can’t observe directly, or to areas that call for further consultation with the family.

Support, Not Replacement

However, as AI becomes increasingly present in mental health care, defining its role and limitations is increasingly important. For Dr. Mosheva, the boundaries are already clear: “I see [AI] strictly as a tool to support clinical judgment and enrich our dialogue with families, not as a substitute for either,” she explains. “It does not replace the clinical relationship with the child, nor does it replace genuine, ongoing conversation with parents.” 

This reflects Sheba Psychiatry’s approach: AI supports, rather than replaces, the human relationships and professional clinical judgment at the heart of mental health care. In practice, it helps the multidisciplinary team use parents’ perspectives to develop a fuller understanding of each child and create more informed, individualized treatment plans.

That combination of innovation and family-centered care is central to Ward D’s work—an approach that has contributed to Sheba’s ranking among Newsweek’s World’s Best Hospitals for eight consecutive years.