Methods and apparatus for evaluating developmental conditions and providing control over coverage and reliability

Abstract

The methods and apparatus disclosed herein can evaluate a subject for a developmental condition or conditions and provide improved sensitivity and specificity for categorical determinations indicating the presence or absence of the developmental condition by isolating hard-to-screen cases as inconclusive. The methods and apparatus disclosed herein can be configured to be tunable to control the tradeoff between coverage and reliability and to adapt to different application settings and can further be specialized to handle different population groups.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE[0001]The present application is a bypass continuation of International Patent Application No. PCT / US2017 / 061552, filed Nov. 14, 2017, which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 62 / 421,958, filed on Nov. 14, 2016, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 62 / 452,908, filed on Jan. 31, 2017, each of which application are herein incorporated in their entireties for all purposes.[0002]The subject matter of the present application is related to U.S. application Ser. No. 14 / 354,032, filed on Apr. 24, 2014, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,443,205, and U.S. application Ser. No. 15 / 234,814, filed on Aug. 11, 2016, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Prior methods and apparatus for diagnosing and treating cognitive function attributes of people such as, for example, people with a developmental condition or disorder can be less than ideal in at least some respects. Unfortunately, a less than ideal amount of time, e...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent describes methods and systems for diagnosing and treating developmental and behavioral disorders using a single test. The system can identify the most predictive next question or symptom based on a person's answers, increasing sensitivity and specificity while reducing the number of questions. The system can also account for different subject-specific dimensions such as age, location, and gender to improve accuracy. The methods and systems can provide treatment recommendations based on the identified disorder, helping to improve treatment outcomes. Overall, the technology can help to diagnose and treat multiple disorders with a single test, reducing the time and cost of the evaluation and treatment process.

Problems solved by technology

Prior methods and apparatus for diagnosing and treating cognitive function attributes of people such as, for example, people with a developmental condition or disorder can be less than ideal in at least some respects.

Unfortunately, a less than ideal amount of time, energy and money can be required to obtain a diagnosis and treatment, and to determine whether a subject is at risk for decreased cognitive function such as, dementia, Alzheimer's or a developmental disorder.

The healthcare system is under increasing pressure to deliver care at lower costs, and prior methods and apparatus for clinically diagnosing or identifying a subject as at risk of a developmental disorder can result in greater expense and burden on the health care system than would be ideal.

Further, at least some subjects are not treated as soon as ideally would occur, such that the burden on the healthcare system is increased with the additional care required for these subjects.

The identification and treatment of cognitive function attributes, including for example, developmental disorders in subjects can present a daunting technical problem in terms of both accuracy and efficiency.

Many known methods for identifying such attributes or disorders are often time-consuming and resource-intensive, requiring a subject to answer a large number of questions or undergo extensive observation under the administration of qualified clinicians, who may be limited in number and availability depending on the subject's geographical location.

In addition, many known methods for identifying and treating behavioral, neurological, or mental health conditions or disorders have less than ideal accuracy and consistency, as subjects to be evaluated using such methods often present a vast range of variation that can be difficult to capture and classify.

Although prior lengthy tests with questions can be administered to caretakers such as parents in order to diagnose or identify a subject as at risk for a developmental condition or disorder, such tests can be quite long and burdensome.

For example at least some of these tests have over one hundred questions, and more than one such lengthy test may be administered further increasing the burden on health care providers and caretakers.

Additional data may be required such as clinical observation of the subject, and clinical visits may further increase the amount of time and burden on the healthcare system.

The delay between identified need for an evaluation and clinical diagnosis can result in less than ideal care in at least some instances.

However, the large gap between a caretaker initially identifying a prospective as needing an evaluation and clinically diagnosing the subject or clinically identifying the subject as at risk can result in less than ideal treatment.

Although prior methods and apparatus have been proposed to decrease the number of questions asked, such prior methods and apparatus can be less than ideal in at least some respects.

Although prior methods and apparatus have relied on training and test datasets to train and validate, respectively, the methods and apparatus, the actual clinical results of such methods and apparatus can be less than ideal, as the clinical environment can present more challenging cases than the training and test dataset.

The clinical environment can present subjects who may have one or more of several possible developmental disorders, and relying on a subset of questions may result in less than ideal sensitivity and specificity of the tested developmental disorder.

Also, the use of only one test to diagnose only one developmental disorder, e.g. autism, may provide less than ideal results for diagnosing the intended developmental disorder and other disorders, as subject behavior from other developmental disorders may present confounding variables that decrease the sensitivity and specificity of the subset of questions targeting the one developmental disorder.

Also, reliance on a predetermined subset can result in less than ideal results as more questions than would be ideal may be asked, and the questions asked may not be the ideal subset of questions for a particular subject.

The evaluation of a subject using multiple diagnostic tests may be lengthy, expensive, inconvenient, and logistically challenging to arrange.

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