Universal screening & universal intervention for every child

A digital integrated system to help every child reach their full potential by connecting parents, providers, educators, and local resources

Nobel Laureate James Heckman calculated that there's $17 return for every dollar invested in early childhood, making it one of the highest ROI that a society can achieve. Yet mental health is a global systemic issue. Even in the USA, 1 in 4 children is at moderate or high risk for developmental delays, resulting one million kids enter school with undiagnosed disabilities each year. In China, it’s 1 in 3 children while in India, it’s closer to 1 in 2 children. When undetected and untreated, developmental delays can lead to early school failure and attendant social and emotional problems. Risk of developmental delays nearly doubles for children of parents in poverty, or who have less than a high school education. Children at risk of developmental issues are vulnerable to academic underachievement, under or unemployment, lack of friends and supportive relationships, and higher rates of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes later in life. 

With the help of the community, early screening can lead to earlier intervention. Hence reducing cost and worry for all caretakers of children, allowing every child to reach their full potential, and ensuring national peace and prosperity. To do so, BabyNoggin has built an end-to-end child health & wellness digital platform, that:

1) empowers all caretakers of children to self-screen for violence, food insecurities, mental, behavioral, and developmental issues via an app with detailed video and text instructions, that are clinically validated
2) automates scoring to save training time and eliminate human scoring errors 
Teaches caretakers developmentally appropriate activities to help promote their child’s development at the right time of need
3) suggests local community health workers, health specialists for the 11-25% of kids who screened to be high risk and allow caretakers to connect through telemedicine for further evaluation. 
4) allows secured parent-expert communications for long-term intervention and coaching

The CDC reports that 1 in 4 children under age 5 have developmental problems. As brains grow to 90% of adult size by age 3, early intervention is key . Recognised as a Promising Idea by the Early Childhood Innovation Prize,  BabyNoggin is a novel digital platform that:

1. Alleviates the screening and referral burden on health providers.

2. Empowers parents to self screen.

3. Increases interoperability by sharing results with providers.

4. Helps providers offer personalized activities leveraging our machine-learning and AI algorithms to help the 15% moderate risk kids.

5. Enhances referrals, care coordination, and early intervention for the 11% of high risk kids.

BabyNoggin is a technology platform that uses product design thinking principles to help:

1. Parents screen for delays more easily.

2. Pediatricians and teachers meet compliance guidelines.

3. Children connect to FREE resources when in need.

We digitize every paper trial in this care coordination chain. We also apply machine learning & AI algorithms to our longitudinal data from birth to age 8 (every 2-4 months) for a better prediction of symptoms and risks before they occur.

Over the next 12 months, our product will include:

1. More screening tools to assess not only developmental and mental issues, but also childhood adversity issues, such as home violence and food insecurity.

2. Mandarin Chinese, in addition to the existing English & Spanish versions.

3. Better AI algorithms to prove that our screening tool is not only as good as a standard clinical screening, but one that can outform the current standards.

4. A new release of the parent app and an admin dashboard, in addition to the existing tablet app.

5. An Android version, in addition to the current iOS platform.

To empower both families and frontline health workers to help every child succeed, our goal is to screen over 10 million families within the next 5 years worldwide. In the US, we’ve forged formal partnerships with established nonprofits and had multiple conversations with state entities, healthcare providers, and early care educators. Internationally, we have had conversations with various ministries of health, health insurance companies, health management organizations, and community health centers across five continents.

To reach UNIVERSAL Screening, we plan to:

• Increase visibility and reach through showcases and presentations at leading medical and early childhood conferences.

• Build our following and our reputation through content marketing by publishing white paper & peer-reviewed articles on clinical outcomes.

• Gather referrals through pediatric purchasing groups and early childhood nonprofits.

We have already screened a few thousand families through our free app download. Out of 750 BabyNoggin app users in 2017, 79% of parents reported an increase in understanding of developmental milestones. As early screening is recommended by the AAP, 96% of app users completed at least one screening for developmental delay, autism, or postpartum depression. In a survey with 41 parents, 79.1% reported they would use a screening app if their pediatricians recommended it.

Given our shorten sales cycle, we are confident that our impact will reach half a million families within the next 12 months and serve 3 million families within 3 years. Our beneficiaries are children ages 0-5 and their families, teachers, and health providers.

Using data from surveys pre & post BabyNoggin usage, we are confident that we will see:

• Increased parental understanding of their child’s development

• Increased parent-provider engagement and satisfaction

• Increased screening and referral rates to early intervention services

• Decreased long term healthcare cost

• Real-time society-wide health data to change policies

CEO: Jin Lee, PhD taught child developmental psychology at Oxford; Humana/ Providence Ventures; 4th startup

VP Content: Jonathan Tuttle, 3 exits; 2 in baby space - BabyCenter (acquired by J&J); GoCityKids (acquired by Nickelodeon): 30- 100x returns

VP Engineering: Avishaan Sethi, NASA bioengineer; Toyota; built 40+ apps for Fortune 100 companies; 4th startup

Our other teammates have product expertise from Pivotal Labs, early childhood education and sales experience from the National Center for Pain.

We are focusing on B2B licensing to children’s hospitals, pediatric groups, and early childhood nonprofits to increase revenue, efficiency, and quality of care.  We charge a monthly subscription fee, but pediatricians are reimbursed up to $61 per screen per child and the platform saves clinical staff 15 minutes per screen. The incentives for preschools include reduced screening time for teachers, opportunities to differentiate developmental activities for students, and increased quality ratings and funding for the site. In 2019 we’ll also offer subscription plans directly to parents to access telemedicine and second medical opinions. Our ultimate goal is to analyze the longitudinal at-home data with clinical EMR and genetic data through machine learning algorithms to predict risk levels before symptoms arise.

Unlike our competitors, BabyNoggin has:

1. Endorsements from leading pediatric experts and screening authors.

2.  An experienced team with 3 prior exits over $1B.

3. First mover advantage in pediatric mobile spaces with the backing of the American Academy of Pediatric chapters.

4.  Longitudinal data from continuous at-home behavioral data (collected every 2 months from birth) that enables predictive analytics and allows policy makers to make informed decisions.

Our primary goal is to achieve universal screening for every child. We are interested in meeting any advisor, partner, nonprofit, and government entity working in early childhood, social determinants of health, and population health prevention. Solve’s 12 months of personalized support with leaders from both private and public sectors is a perfect fit to help us accelerate our reach, validate our impact, and most importantly, scale our solutions to reach more families and health providers in need. The media exposure and opportunity to forge long lasting relationships with other entrepreneurs will be a great value add.

Key barriers are:

1. A lack of awareness of the importance of screenings and early intervention. Solve can help us spread our message that the best time to intervene is during a child’s first 1000 days of life.

2. Bias that digital self-screening is only for the educated families. Solve can help us with tactics to persuade others that an underserved population can be empowered to self screen with the right tools.

3. Connecting to the right partners interested in early childhood and health. The Solve community can provide introductions and connect us with those who share our mission.