Communications of the ACM
Diagnostic Apps For Adhd, Dementia?
Researchers at IBM Israel were awarded the top prize at the Brain Inspired Technology for Education Hackathon for a prototype application that screens for early signs of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.
Credit: University of Cambridge
IBM Israel researchers won the top prize at the Brain Inspired Technology for Education (BITE) Hackathon for a prototype application that screens for early indications of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The smartphone app asks users to draw a rectangle 10 times, while accelerometers and sensors in their phone or wearable device track the movement. The researchers note this process helps identify and classify individuals who have difficulty initiating and maintaining continuous motor activity.
The researchers first established a baseline from electroencephalogram headband tests on 17 volunteers, four of whom have ADHD, and then let them try the app and found preliminary evidence for a possible relationship between mental and motoric characteristics within 25 seconds of the subject drawing the rectangles.
"The IBM researchers believe this type of analytics can help identify different types of ADHD, not just a single classification of those with difficulties in concentration," says IBM Research.
IBM Israel researchers also developed a prototype smartphone technology to detect dementia at an early stage by analyzing voice and speech patterns. Users are asked to perform cognitive tasks such as counting backwards, describing a picture, or identifying words that start with a certain letter. The technology has shown an 85-percent accuracy rate in preliminary trials.
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