Development and Validation of Obesity Interpreter: A Mobile Application-Based Tool for Children and Adolescents

To develop and validate Obesity Interpreter, a mobile application tool to assist in assessing children with obesity and avoid unwarranted workup in physiological obesity.

The Obesity Interpreter offers guidance on probable diagnoses and workup based on clinical inputs. The validation involved comparing the guidance from the Obesity Interpreter, a pediatric endocrinologist, a pediatrician, and a trainee on the final diagnosis (gold standard) in 400 children and adolescents with obesity concerns (270 constitutional, 23 genetic/syndromic, 11 drug-induced, 13 endocrine, 83 normal or overweight).

The concordance scores were higher for the endocrinologist (92.1%) and the Obesity Interpreter (99.5%) compared to the pediatrician (75.4%) and the trainee (56.6%). The workup guidance of the Obesity Interpreter aligned with the gold standard in 398 (99.5%) subjects (Cohen's kappa 0.989, 95% CI 0.971, 1.0). Diagnostic workup discrepancies were noted in 83 (20.8%) subjects by the pediatrician and in 162 (40.5%) subjects by the trainee. Utilizing the mobile application would have prevented 288/ 292 (98.6%) errors observed in the study with high agreement for classification recommendation (Cohen's kappa 0.990, 95% CI 0.975, 1.0).

Obesity Interpreter provided guidance aligned with the gold standard for evaluation of children with obesity.