Using mobile health technology to assess childhood autism in low-resource community settings in India: an innovation to address the detection gap

Dubey, I, Bishain, R, Dasgupta, J, Bhavnani, S, Belmonte, M ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4633-9400, Gliga, T, Mukherjee, D, Lockwood Estrin, G, Johnson, M, Chandran, S, Patel, V, Gulati, S, Divan, G and Chakrabarti, B, 2023. Using mobile health technology to assess childhood autism in low-resource community settings in India: an innovation to address the detection gap. Autism. ISSN 1362-3613

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Abstract

A diagnosis of autism typically depends on clinical assessments by highly trained professionals. This high resource demand poses a challenge in low-resource settings. Digital assessment of neurodevelopmental symptoms by non-specialists provides a potential avenue to address this challenge. This cross-sectional case-control field study establishes proof of principle for such a digital assessment. We developed and tested an app, START, that can be administered by non-specialists to assess autism phenotypic domains (social, sensory, motor) through child performance and parent reports. N = 131 children (2–7 years old; 48 autistic, 43 intellectually disabled and 40 non-autistic typically developing) from low-resource settings in Delhi-NCR, India were assessed using START in home settings by non-specialist health workers. The two groups of children with neurodevelopmental disorders manifested lower social preference, greater sensory interest and lower fine-motor accuracy compared to their typically developing counterparts. Parent report further distinguished autistic from non-autistic children. Machine-learning analysis combining all START-derived measures demonstrated 78% classification accuracy for the three groups. Qualitative analysis of the interviews with health workers and families of the participants demonstrated high acceptability and feasibility of the app. These results provide feasibility, acceptability and proof of principle for START, and demonstrate the potential of a scalable, mobile tool for assessing neurodevelopmental conditions in low-resource settings.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Autism
Creators:	Dubey, I., Bishain, R., Dasgupta, J., Bhavnani, S., Belmonte, M., Gliga, T., Mukherjee, D., Lockwood Estrin, G., Johnson, M., Chandran, S., Patel, V., Gulati, S., Divan, G. and Chakrabarti, B.
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Date:	17 July 2023
ISSN:	1362-3613
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1177/13623613231182801 DOI 1783290 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2023, Article Reuse Guidelines. Open access with Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	19 Jul 2023 08:49
Last Modified:	19 Jul 2023 08:51
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/49383

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