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New Tablet App Helps Diagnose TBI
Apps to help diagnose traumatic brain injury have been coming out for the past year or so, but they were mostly standardized sets of questions and baseline tests, which were used to compare with answers from after an injury. Pretty much none of the apps had the ability to do actual neuromuscular testing on a patients. The only way to test that was subjective.
A tablet app using a stylus and a tracing exercise developed by the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, the Beth Israel Medical Center, and Hebrew SeniorLife hopes to change all of that. The app, called NeuroAssess could be used to assess brain trauma at the site of accidents or the sidelines of football games.
UPI.com reports the tests involve using a stylus to follow a moving target tracing around a circle, measuring deviations from the circle, motion fluidity (how long the user pauses) and the persons ability to adapt to changes. It also takes adjusts based on the user’s age and sex.
With how quickly these apps to help diagnose brain injury are changing and improving, it won’t be long before sports professionals, doctors, and EMTs are armed with an arsenal of tests to help immediately make informed decisions for treatment.