Chattanooga Autism Conference

Presentation Title: EarliPoint: Augmenting access to objective and cost-effective diagnosis and assessment of autism in rural health.

Presentation Description: Limited access to early diagnosis of autism is compromising the outcomes of tens of thousands of children in the US every year, with disproportionate effects on traditionally underserved communities, specifically minority, low-income and rural families. This presentation reviews this challenge and an emerging solution resulting from new science and technologies. It includes the scientific and clinical validation foundations for a biomarker-based tool cleared by the FDA for broad dissemination. This tool, called EarliPoint, is an eye-tracking-based, objective and quantitative medical device for the diagnosis, assessment, and repeated monitoring/treatment response for autism for children aged 16 months to 8 years. 

About Ami Klin, PhD: Ami Klin, Ph.D. is the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Professor and Chief of the Division of Autism and Developmental Health at Emory University School of Medicine, and Director of the Marcus Autism Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of London and completed clinical and research post-doctoral fellowships at the Yale Child Study Center. He directed the Autism Program at the Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine until 2010, where he was the Harris Professor of Child Psychology & Psychiatry. Dr. Klin’s primary research activities focus on social mind and social brain, and on developmental aspects of autism from infancy through adulthood. These studies include novel techniques such as the eye-tracking laboratories co-directed with Warren Jones, which allow researchers to see the world through the eyes of individuals with autism. These techniques led to the clinical validation of EarliPoint, a biomarker-based objective and quantitative tool for the diagnosis and assessment of children with autism from the age of 16 months to 8 years, cleared by the FDA for broad clinical implementation since 2023. Dr. Klin joined his longtime collaborator Dr. Jones in founding EarliTec Health with the missional goal of disseminating EarliPoint broadly and to further develop its indication, including measures of treatment response and monitoring. Dr. Klin is the author of over 250 scientific publications in the field of autism and related conditions.

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