WA telehealth startup BlinkLab says smartphone autism app is the answer to Perth’s paediatrician crisis

WA telehealth startup BlinkLab reckons it has the answer to solving Perth’s paediatrician crisis that has left children with developmental and behavioural issues waiting years for help. The West Australian recently revealed dozens of families were waiting more than four years for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In some cases, Perth children are going through their entire primary school years waiting for a diagnostic assessment. ASX-listed BlinkLab hopes to commercialise a smartphone app to help diagnose autism and ADHD in young children and cut wait times and “enormous cost”. BlinkLab chief executive and co-founder Henk-Jan Boele said the tech aimed to “democratise neurometric assessments that have been around . . . for decades“. “The smartphone tech is essentially capturing facial reflex responses (like) blinks, mouth movements, vocalisations, and our machine-learning algorithm combines these markers to come up with a prediction for autism and ADHD,” he said. “It’s all about empowering doctors using principles from neuroscience to make a better and more reliable and, also hopefully, an earlier diagnosis.” Chair Brian Leedman said BlinkLab was “sitting in the most topical space in healthcare today globally”. “It’s all about this burden on the healthcare system of undiagnosed autism and ADHD in children,” he said. Mr Leedman was also behind the formerly ASX-listed ResApp, which was bought by US pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer for nearly $200m in 2022. BlinkLab in October told shareholders its US pilot study involving 485 children demonstrated high diagnostic accuracy. The device demonstrated an 84.7 per cent specificity score — which measures the device’s ability to identify individuals without the illness — and 83.7 per cent sensitivity — which measures the device’s ability to identify patients with the illness. This significantly exceeded the US Food and Drug Administration’s benchmark of 65 per cent for both metrics. “The higher the sensitivity-specificity score we can achieve then the more commercial the product becomes,” Mr Leedman said. Since listing on the Australian Securities Exchange in April 2024, the stock has surged over 270 per cent to 97¢. “When you look at the share price, it’s because we’ve done what we said we would do relatively in the timeframe we said we would do them in,” Mr Leedman said. BlinkLab is now gearing up for an FDA registrational study, equivalent to a clinical phase 3 trial, set to commence early next year.