May 19, 2009 11:43 pm US/Pacific
New Software Helps In Treatment Of Autism
HILLSBOROUGH (CBS 5) ―
A high-tech resource developed in the Bay Area is helping parents of autistic children to share information on treating autism, and it's already making an impact.
Elizabeth Horn and Zack Nelson's 15-year-old daughter Sophia is autistic.
"You're just shattered," Horn said. "Incurable, untreatable. Life long condition. These things were utterly and completely horrifying to me."
Autism also hit hard in the Vembu family, 10-year-old Siddharth was diagnosed when he was five.
"He had language, but it wasn't developing at a normal rate," said Sridhar Venbu, the boy's father.
But in the two families, autism was not accepted as incurable. Maybe it was their high-tech, can-do attitudes. Both fathers are CEO's of software companies. One mother is an engineer while the other is a filmmaker whose documentary on autism has been seen around the world.
The families found each other on the internet, and have jointly developed an internet-based software system called
ChARM.
"The time and the place are right, and it's driven by human energy and the power of the internet," Nelson said.
Autism is a mysterious neurological disorder that affects 1 out of every 150 children in the United States. A new case is diagnosed every 22 minutes. It's a spectrum disorder with cases ranging from severe to mild.
Autistic children have speech and behavior problems and they often seem to be locked in their own world. But parents say some children have been helped by changes in medicine, diet or even such things as animal therapy. Many parents keep logs full of treatment information.
"The whole process is data intensive," mother Pramila Srinivasan said.
The Charm system gives parents a central location to log treatments, track progress and share that information to parents everywhere.
The software is free to families; medical providers will pay for a professional version.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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