Online tool said to diagnose autism faster

A new online tool promises to cut from hours to minutes the time it takes to diagnose autism in young children, Harvard scientists announced Tuesday.

The new method of diagnosis, developed by Dennis Wall of Harvard Medical School's Center for Biomedical Informatics, calls for only seven questions -- not the currently accepted 93 -- to evaluate autism with what Wall said was 100 percent accuracy.

His new technique has an accompanying video of an affected child to aid in the evaluation. Both tools are available online.

"We believe this approach will make it possible for more children to be accurately diagnosed during the early, critical period when behavioral therapies are most effective," Wall said.

Wall and his team, who published their results in the journal Nature Translational Psychiatry, say the method shaves the total diagnostic time by nearly 95 percent.

It has taken the usual 93-part diagnostic questionnaire and subtracted 86 nonessential questions from it, Wall said. Many of the questions, he said, were redundant.

The streamlined process, he added, can help get children into treatment and social services faster.

In addition to the current 93-question test, known as the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised, clinicians also use another examination called the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, or ADOS, which measures several behaviors.

Experts say it can take up to three hours to complete old testing, with much of the time devoted to the protracted questionnaire.

With autism having soared to 1 in every 88 children, up by 23 percent from 1 in every 110 just a few years ago, evaluation for autism is vital, Wall said.

Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New Hyde Park, said streamlining the diagnostic process is important, but he wonders whether the new test is applicable to all children.

"A test needs to be very sensitive," Adesman said. "The accuracy of this abbreviated test seems excellent but it wasn't tested in as broad a population as it needs to be, so some of its accuracy may not be there."

To develop the new evaluation method, Wall and his team examined diagnostic information from hundreds of children with autism whose data are stored by the Simon Foundation as well as other databases. The foundation was started by Long Island billionaire James Simon and his wife, Marilyn. Their daughter has Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder.

Abbreviated evaluation for autism

Subtracts 86 questions from the old exam

Zeroes in on clinical questions pertinent to condition

Asks child's age, whether child makes eye contact; has imaginative play, among other questions

Method uses a video to help clinicians make evaluation