PANDABox

Our goal is to learn how researchers can better measure child development by empowering parents to take a more active role during the research session. We are also interested in making research accessible by eliminating the need to travel to a laboratory. As such, our assessment activities involve parents working directly with their child in the comfort of their own home while the examiner provides coaching over the phone and through provided technology. Our participants bring to the study a variety of unique abilities, experiences, and needs. We love working with our families!

What is it? PANDABox is a novel telehealth-based platform for remotely monitoring early clinical risk factors in rare syndromes.

Why is it important? Telehealth-based research offers a promising future for developmental surveillance, particularly in children with rare syndromes who are geographically dispersed and are often unable to travel to an in-person lab. PANDABox brings the lab home, collecting useful data for developmental studies and removing economic and geographic barriers.

What makes it different? To date, most telehealth-based clinical research is observational in nature (e.g. video diaries, Skype-based interviews) and fails to integrate experimental methods that are important for conclusive research. This platform goes beyond behavioral observation methods typically employed in telehealth research to include scientific metrics that are more sensitive to acute developmental changes, including eye movements, vocal acoustics, and psychophysiology.