Developmental Screening-Evaluation of an m-Health Version of the Parents Evaluation Developmental Status Tools.
Developmental delays are more prevalent in low-income countries and access to developmental screening is severely limited.



This study evaluated an m-Health version of a standard developmental screening tool, Parents Evaluation Developmental Status (PEDS) and PEDS:Developmental Milestones (PEDS:DM) for use by community health workers (CHWs) in terms of (1) correspondence with conventional paper-based testing by a speech language pathologist (SLP) and (2) inter-rater reliability compared to an SLP.



CHWs were trained in a primary healthcare (PHC) setting to administer the newly developed smartphone application version of the PEDS tools. One SLP and two CHWs recruited 207 caregivers who were attending a baby wellness clinic. Caregivers were tested by one CHW using the smartphone application of the PEDS tools; a qualified SLP simultaneously recorded and scored the PEDS tools on the same participants.



High positive (100%) and negative correspondence (96%) was found between the paper-based PEDS tools and the smartphone application PEDS tools and between the SLP and CHW. Almost perfect (Cohen's Kappa) inter-rater agreement between conditions was demonstrated (κ = 0.873 to κ = 0.961).



Outcomes of the smartphone application, operated by a CHW, corresponded closely to the gold standard PEDS tools operated by a health professional. Trained CHWs can conduct accurate developmental screening using the smartphone version of the PEDS tools.
1 Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, University of Pretoria , Pretoria, South Africa .
Boledi K
BK
Maleka
1 Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, University of Pretoria , Pretoria, South Africa .
Jeannie
J
Van Der Linde
2 Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee.
Frances Page
FP
Glascoe
1 Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, University of Pretoria , Pretoria, South Africa .|3 Ear Sciences Centre, School of Surgery, The University of Western Australia , Nedlands, Australia .|4 Australia Ear Science Institute Australia , Subiaco, Australia .
De Wet
W
Swanepoel
D017028:Caregivers; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003150:Community Health Workers; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000175:diagnosis*; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D063731:Mobile Applications / Q000592:standards*; D015588:Observer Variation; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D000068997:Smartphone
e-health; m-health; pediatrics; technology