The Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre

A smartphone app to help parents identify autism

Autism affects 1 in 68 children. If identified and diagnosed in the first few years of a child’s life, it need not become a lifelong disability. To obtain a diagnosis, parents typically must find a local autism-trained health professional - a significant challenge in many communities. With ASDetect, an app that uses mobile phone video to assess the likelihood of autism in children between 11 and 30 months of age, children and parents can receive a preliminary and reliable indication of whether they should seek professional follow-up evaluation without leaving home. The project aims to scale within Australia and around the world, helping to change the lives of as many as 73 million children globally.