Boise company receives $1M grant for at-home autism test

The CEO of a Boise medical technology company who said his son was diagnosed with autism much later than he should have been is trying to ensure future families won’t have the same problem.

Ronald Oberleitner’s company, Behavior Imaging Solutions, received a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to help further develop its app, the Naturalistic Observation Diagnostic Assessment system or NODA. Oberleitner created the app to help families diagnose children with autism spectrum disorder more conveniently.

Oberleitner wants to make sure families have an easier process than the one he and his wife encountered leading to the diagnosis of his then-3-year-old son in 1996.

“With my son it was two years before he was diagnosed,” Oberlietner sad. “It was a bad process. At 13 months we started seeing doctors and he wasn’t diagnosed until he was three. He could have gotten early intervention and we’re trying to help other families who are going through the same thing.”

The NODA app gives families the chance to speak with 10 medical specialists  and more than 500 referring doctors who are working within the app so far.  Parents can send video of their child’s behavior through the app to have it analyzed and to help streamline the process.

The program guides parents in recording their children. If a clinician needs additional footage, or wants to see the child in a different natural situation, the parent is notified. Oberlietner said the app is helpful when parents don’t have ready access to a specialist.

“In Phoenix, where our app has already gone online, there is a center kind of like St. Luke’s in Boise where the waiting list to see the diagnostic expert is 800 long,” Oberlietner said. “Which is at least a year and a half.”

The app hasn’t been fully launched in Idaho. Behavior Imaging Solutions is using the NIH grant to measure the time difference between parents getting a diagnosis through the app in rural Idaho compared to traditional means.

Behavior Imaging Solutions partnered with the University of Idaho’s Center on Disabilities and Human Development to run a trial where the center will work with 10 families that suspect their child has autism. Half the families will go through the usual practices of the UI staff to receive a diagnosis and the other half will use the NODA app.  A second phase of the study will then expand the test to 40 families beginning Aug. 1.

Dr. Julie Foder, director of the University of Idaho’s Center on Disabilities and Human Development, said UI was excited to become involved in the project after seeing what other products of Behavior Imaging had done in the classroom and thought this was a good chance to expand its use in new directions.

According to the Center for Disease Control’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, diagnosing autism is possible at about 2 years of age, but the average age of diagnosis is 5.7 years. The earlier children with autism can get into intensive, one-on-one therapy, the better chance they have of curbing behaviors and developing at a closer rate to their peers.

Once the study is completed, the program will go live in Idaho. Behavior Imaging Solutions has been contacted about launching the program in Florida, California, Japan, Singapore and Australia as well, Oberleitner said.

Behavior Imaging Solutions began work on NODA in 2012 with the Georgia Institute of Technology

and the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center. Behavior Imaging Solutions designed and developed the app and launched it in December 2014.

The cost for a family to reach a diagnosis through NODA ranges from $250 to $500.

“After my own experience, I just felt compelled to bring this as a diagnosis option,” Oberleitner said.

Behavior Imaging Solutions was founded in 2005. It is headquartered in Boise and has an IT office in Austin, Texas. The company has 12 employees and has partnerships with six U.S. universities and two international universities.