Provider perspectives on equity in use of mobile health autism screening tools.
Katharine E Zuckerman, Luis Andres Rivas Vazquez, Yesenia Morales Santos and 7 others
PMID 38078430WHAT IT FOUND
Providers worry families confuse mobile screening results with a diagnosis.
They need tools that are short, work on slow internet, and clearly state they are not diagnostic to avoid alarming parents or wasting clinic time.
Key findings
01Providers fear parents will mistake a positive mobile screen for a diagnosis, especially if the tool does not clearly distinguish screening from diagnostic evaluation.
02Adoption is blocked by practical barriers: tools must be short (under 15 minutes for parents), work with low bandwidth, and integrate with electronic health records to be useful in busy clinics.
03Trust in a tool depends heavily on familiarity; providers immediately recognized and trusted the M-CHAT, while unfamiliar tools required extra time to research validity.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study focused only on front-line providers, not specialists or families. Providers did not use the tools themselves; they only viewed result screenshots, which may have missed usability issues. The sample was recruited through professional networks, which may introduce bias. The study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have influenced providers' views on remote screening.
Declared interests
One author is on the scientific advisory board of a company that develops autism screening technology. Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume these tools are ready for clinical use. The providers interviewed expressed significant concerns about validity, equity, and workflow integration, indicating that current mobile screening tools may exacerbate disparities if adopted without careful consideration of their limitations.