Five years of clinical research conducted at Harvard Medical School resulted in the creation of Cognoa’s app, which helps to screen for developmental delays in early childhood. The app, which is now available to parents through partnering insurance providers and employers, can be used to track children’s developmental progress and identify any sources of concern. Pediatricians can then use the information obtained through the Cognoa app to inform meaningful diagnoses and treatment plans.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), delays in the acquisition of language and speech, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD/ADD, are among the conditions the app can help detect.
While early intervention is crucial in properly addressing these and other developmental issues, statistics show that there is often a significant lag in achieving an appropriate diagnosis. Sometimes that time lag can stretch into years, putting a child outside the optimum window for intervention and treatment to be most successful.
The app changes all that, putting initial screening power into the hands of families themselves. A parent using the app responds to a series of basic questions about a child’s behavior and uploads short videos documenting it. The app then applies standard clinical diagnostic criteria based on algorithms produced by research at Harvard Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine.
The risk assessment produced then gives parents and their child’s physician a head start in crafting an individualized diagnosis and an ongoing plan for prioritizing the child’s development.
