Tablet app for child cognitive assessment in low and middle income countries

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to millions of children who face challenges in achieving their cognitive potential due to chronic poverty and other factors such as malaria and HIV infection. Scarcity of resources during early developmental stages may contribute to developmental delay in various domains, including motor, language and social-emotional, that may affect quality of life into adulthood. However, early identification of developmental delay enables early intervention, often resulting in developmental gains and a lifetime of improved capacity and fulfillment. A team from the Neuroscience research unit at Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) has been actively engaged in developing and adapting measures of child development for use in Low Income Countries. Currently, assessments are conducted with paper, pencil and stopwatch. In collaboration with a Health Informatics team from the University of San Francisco (USF), a tablet app was designed and developed to replace paper and pencil assessments of children ages 6–60 months, with the aim of improving the data collection process and the integrity of the resulting data. The app is in the prototype stage, and is expected to be field-tested and evaluated next year.