Florence T. Bourgeois MD, MPH, is assistant professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School, faculty in the Computational Health Informatics Program, and Scientific Director of the Biobank for Health Discovery at Boston Children’s Hospital

Every day, more than half of children seen in outpatient clinics are prescribed a medication that is not FDA approved for the child’s age or diagnosis. Such off-label prescribing is widespread across pediatric conditions and treatment settings and as many as 90 percent of pediatricians have knowingly prescribed off-label medications. …