POSTED BY DAN YOUNG

Over the past few months, we’ve been part of an amazing project. We’ve been working on an iPad app with the Cleveland Clinic that objectively measures the extent of a patient’s concussion.

Traditionally clinicians and caregivers would use their personal observations and paper-based responses to determine the severity of a concussive injury. The tests themselves endeavored to be objective, however, they are subject to observational biases and variance. As much as they were designed to be objective, they were more subjective than many would like.

Medical device manufactures have been working on ways of creating a more objective means of measuring concussions. These include MRIs and stability testing equipment such as a NeuroCom machine. The equipment is precise, large and expensive. As you might imagine, this puts it out of reach of school districts and many academic institutions.

Enter the iPad. Each iPad has an array of sensors, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, proximity sensor, light sensor, etc. When you combine the data from these sensors, the results are quite sophisticated.

The app we’re creating with the Cleveland Clinic combines the embedded sensor data along with the portability and reliability of the iPad to serve as a platform to better measure the extent of a patient’s concussion. The app not only collects sensory data from a patient, but it serves as an excellent platform to replace the paper-based tests previously administered by clinicians.

The app allows clinicians, athletic trainers and other caregivers to walk through an evaluation. The app provides a list of questions and observations, allows the patient to respond to cognitive and motor skills tests and it measure the vestibular system of a patient by having the iPad literally affixed to the patient’s back.

Another advantage of the app is that it is affordable. Even though the system is still in a research phase of development, the cost of an iPad is far less than the cost of a stability testing machine. Furthermore the system is portable; the app can be used on the sidelines of a game, in a training room or wherever a clinician may need to evaluate a patient.

The resulting data is then compared to normalized or baseline data to better illustrate the severity of the concussive injury.

Mobile devices, such as an iPad or Android, are often thought of as gadgets that supplement and enhance our lives. What many people don’t realize is the level of sophistication that these devices are able to achieve with respect to the objective collection of data. The C3 app is but one example of this.