Engineering for Social Change
Published: May 16, 2008Sampathkumar Veeraraghavan’s engineering interest emerged in a high school computer class. But this member’s calling came after a friend lamented the dearth of services for his autistic child.
Visiting a local school for developmentally disabled children in Chennai, India, where he lives and works, Veeraraghavan saw children with autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and other disorders thrown into class together. Their differing needs made proper therapy impossible.
“India doesn’t have a dedicated program for identifying and treating autism, so these children are not given the opportunity to learn and grow,” he says.
Over the next three years, Veeraraghavan and a group of medical professionals, led by physician Karthik Srinivasan, developed an automated computational screening system for detecting possible autism in children as young as 18 months.
PROGRAMMED SCREENING The software, known as the Automated Screening System for Developmental Disorders, involves a 30-minute procedure that evaluates the child’s fine and gross motor, social, and language skills through 48 questions aimed at the primary caretaker, and includes artificial-intelligence gaming systems for the child. The screening system assigns each question or task a different numerical value that, when computed, add up to a score that could suggest symptoms of autism. If that happens, the results are automatically sent to Srinivasan’s team, which contacts the parents for more professional and ongoing evaluations. Subsequently, the gaming system could be used to help autistic children improve eye contact and verbal and nonverbal communication.
The system grew out of a research group the team founded called Brahmam (Hindu for “knowledge”) to develop technology to improve the lives of disabled children, motivate students toward engineering careers, and help underprivileged women and children learn new skill sets and set up businesses. The program has also raised funds to provide free education for autistic and impoverished children, rescuing some from child labor.
