ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder with behavioural symptoms including hyperactivity, impulsivity and/or inattention, which strongly impact the development, education and family life of people with this condition. Globally, 5%-7% of children and adolescents and around 3% of the adult population is estimated to have ADHD, whereas the total number of cases in the EU exceeds 8m. Most of the ADHD challenges are also shared by people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) condition, among them: difficulty in daily structure and planning, learning and academic performance, social relationships, comorbidities and economic burden at both individual and overall societal levels.
Family members, practitioners and therapists dealing with ADHD/ASD face five main pain points:
1. ADHD/ASD treatments are costly, placing a substantial economic burden on patients or their families.
2. ADHD/ASD therapies are time-consuming: apart from requiring the parents’ full commitment, there are continuous follow-up meetings with different specialists and planning detailed schedules of activities.
3. ADHD/ASD therapies need simplicity and discreetness: As the most critical point for ADHD/ASD is loss of focus, therapies need to design tasks to be implemented in an easy / non-invasive way.
4. ADHD/ASD therapies require a high degree of coordination among different approaches, with the joint intervention of educators, behavioural psychologists and practitioners, beyond parents.
5. Progress for people with ADHD/ASD is very difficult to track and assess. Due to the complexity of diagnosis and the joint intervention of several approaches, continuous data collection and follow-up is critical to provide insights on the treatment’s effectiveness.
Tiimo+ is the first and only integrated, AI-powered, automated, non-intrusive and user-friendly solution for supporting children with ADHD/ASD, improving their therapies and follow-up methods via evidence-based information.
Current Tiimo version is a gamified assistive technology for smartwatches, which consistently gives helpful advice and provides a clear overview of what children should do at each step of their daily journey, with immediate and easy-to-read tips such as “do homework”. The ongoing interaction with Tiimo enables children to be one step ahead of what is happening; by receiving this overview, they naturally get more confident in themselves. Current Tiimo system is composed by three elements: The watch helps children to stay on track and see what is next in a non-invasive manner, via micro-interactions; the app tells children when an activity starts, notifying them ahead of time in a user-friendly manner; on the online dashboard, parents and therapists plan the kids’ daily activities.
Tiimo+ is our novel technological development: an adaptive self-assessment tool coupled with a machine learning module (MLM), which enables the continuous improvement of planning techniques and ADHD/ASD therapies. Tiimo+ is an integrated Decision-support Tool: Children provide feed-back on their state of mind after performing key activities, enabling caregivers to understand the patterns having the best impact on each child, e.g. which activities can provoke stress and under which circumstances, how to best integrate different educational, behavioural and medical therapy approaches during the day, etc. The MLM analyses the evolution of children mood and ADHD/ASD symptoms over time - along with their qualitative comments and heart rate – by matching the kids feed-back with the activities performed and the therapies received to provide smart, evidence-based observations and suggestions for future therapies and activity planning.
