Portable Guidance in Autism Spectrum Disorder

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): SymTrend, Inc. and Division TEACCH at University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill will test a Portable Visual Guidance System (PVGS) that connects a PDA user to the Internet, and via the Internet to a support team. The PVG S will be used by teens with Asperger Syndrome and High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA) to improve their 1) school social pragmatics, 2) feelings management, and 3) assignment management. In this application, the PVGS becomes a portable and distributed curricu lum that enables prompting, self- monitoring, feedback, data collection, progress charting, goal settings, problem detection, and remediation, and intervention evaluation. Company Mission. To build guidance and monitoring system software for autism applica tions in particular and more broadly for neuropsychiatric and other healthcare applications. Objectives: Our clinical/scientific objectives are: 1) to develop our theoretical rationale for a special education curriculum for AS/HFA persons, 2) to provide th e first comprehensive and effective system for teaching social pragmatics and self-management skills in an inclusion environment, and 3) to provide an intervention framework and support technology for cognitive behavioral treatment of other neuropsychiatri c disorders and for other healthcare guidance and monitoring applications. Our business objectives are: 1) to become the established leader in guidance and monitoring software systems, and 2) to be acquired by a company whose capital and resources can deve lop SymTrend software for its maximum benefit and profit potential. Healthcare Implications. SymTrend systems address and overcome a major obstacle to effective interventions in special education and community medicine: the lack of information tools for: 1 ) symptom recording, 2) progress monitoring, 3) intervention evaluation, 4) trigger detection, 5) behavioral guidance, and 6) care coordination. Research Design. Our research design incorporates a guidance and monitoring curriculum that involves handheld c omputer use by students and teachers/coaches. Data is collected daily by students and teachers via handheld computers in individualized diaries and is HotSync'd to a web site, where it is graphed as progress charts. The curriculum content includes interven tions for social pragmatics, feelings awareness and management, and personal activity management appropriate for AS/HFA teens. This curriculum will be tested in schools where these students are in inclusion classrooms. We will contrast outcomes in their in tervention classes with generalization classes and with the behavior of wait-list controls. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE SymTrend guidance and monitoring systems can address and overcome a major obstacle to effective interventions in special education and commu nity based medicine. That obstacle is the lack of information tools for: 1) symptom recording, 2) progress monitoring, 3) intervention evaluation, 4) symptom trigger detection, 5) behavioral guidance, and 6) care coordination. To date SymTrend support tool s have been used in the education and treatment of individuals with a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders including: Autism, Aspergers Syndrome, Traumatic Brain Injury, Stroke, Depression with self injurious behavior, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder and Schizo phrenia.