Could AI Help Spot Autism Early?

AI can predict which young children are more likely to develop autism AutMedAI correctly identified 80% of children 2 or younger who wound up developing autism Early diagnosis can help kids receive important treatments as young as possible TUESDAY, Aug. 20, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- AI can help predict which young kids are more likely to develop autism, a new study says. The AI looks for patterns in medical data that can be easily obtained from children 2 or younger without extensive assessments or clinical tests, researchers said.

The “AutMedAI” program was able to identify about 80% of children with autism, when tested using data from a group of 12,000 kids, researchers reported Aug. 19 in the journal JAMA Network Open . In particular, the age of a child’s first smile, their first short sentence and the presence of eating difficulties strongly predicted autism, researchers said.

“With an accuracy of almost 80% for children under the age of 2, we hope that this will be a valuable tool for healthcare,” said senior researcher Kristiina Tammimies , an associate professor at the Karolinska Institute’s Department of Women’s and Children’s Health in Sweden. The AI also showed good results in identifying kids who will face more extensive problems in social communication, cognitive ability and developmental delay, researchers said. For the study, researchers trained four separate AI programs to look for autism using data on about 30,000 people with and without autism .