The feasibility of a crowd-based early developmental milestone tracking application

Area of Science:

• Child Development
• Digital Health
• Parental Engagement

Background:

• Tracking developmental milestones is crucial for early detection of delays and intervention.
• Crowdsourcing offers a method to enhance and update developmental checklists.
• The babyTRACKS mobile app facilitates parent-led tracking of child development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate which developmental milestones parents prioritize tracking.
• To identify novel milestones added by parents beyond traditional checklists.
• To assess the feasibility of a crowd-based approach for developmental milestone tracking.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of developmental diaries from 3,832 children in the babyTRACKS app.
• Parents selected from existing milestones or authored new ones.
• Milestones were categorized into developmental domains (e.g., Gross Motor, Cognitive, Speech).

Main Results:

• Parents recorded a median of 5 milestones per child, with 89.15% being developmental.
• Crowd-authored milestones were prevalent in Regulation and Oral Motor domains.
• Crowd-authored Speech milestones appeared significantly later (7 months) than CDC milestones.

Conclusions:

• Crowdsourcing effectively captures parent-identified developmental milestones, especially in Regulation and Oral Motor domains.
• Parents may need more support in recognizing early Language Comprehension and Speech milestones.
• Crowd-based mobile screening tools can empower parents as active partners in child development monitoring.