Crowdsourcing aids baby development diary
A free website developed by a married research couple is assisting parents in monitoring their child’s development using support of the crowd.
Professors Ayelet and Eli Ben-Sasson, faculty members at University of Haifa and the Israel Institute of Technology built the baby.croinc.org (CROwd-based INteractive Clustering) website and offers parents the opportunity to create a personal, electronic developmental diary for their baby as well as learn about their child’s developmental milestones, including motor, communication and social skills.
The site sees parents act as both ‘clients’ and ‘service providers’, according to Eli Ben-Sasson, helping to meet the needs of mothers and fathers through an online community. Users can obtain relevant and specific information in accordance with the individual developmental profile of their children from birth to age six. The project behind the site is part-funded by the European Research Council.
Commenting, Ayelet Ben-Sasson said: “The system gives parents information about future milestones, so that they can help their child advance towards these goals and understand their baby’s behaviour from a developmental standpoint. Research shows that early diagnosis and treatment of developmental problems leads to significantly better outcomes, because of the increased brain plasticity of young children.”
The developmental diary also provides parents with processed statistical information about their child’s rate of development compared with the ‘typical’ rate of development, based on information entered by other parents.
Currently, baby.croinc.org has over 300 members worldwide.
