This 19-year-old built an app to detect movement disorders in children

MyChild app founder Harsh Songra

When Harsh Songra was in primary school, he had trouble controlling and coordinating his movements due to a condition called dyspraxia. Hailing from a small Indian town called Bhopal, it took his parents nine years to figure out his actual problem.

Now, Songra wants to help other children avoid the same fate and get treatment faster from a pediatrician – a doctor that specializes in infant care. His app MyChild helps parents screen developmental disorders in their kids in just 45 seconds. It then makes suggestions on which specialist doctor they should visit.

There are many clinical pediatricians, who focus on diseases, but not enough developmental pediatricians, who make sure a child grows up normally, says Songra. “This in spite of the fact that every sixth newborn [in India] suffers from a developmental disorder today.”

Dyspraxic kids have subtle differences in behaviour and manoeuvres compared to normal children, especially in playground activities like jumping, catching a ball, hopping, and skipping. They also face difficulties in tying shoelaces and buttoning up, as well as drawing and using scissors. To do these tasks, they need one-to-one guidance.

Besides the agony of finding the right doctors, Indians with such disorders also face social stigma and insensitive remarks. Songra’s teacher was rude to his parents when he failed in one of the subjects in sixth grade. He was asked to join a school for disabled children, which, according to Songra, didn’t provide quality education.

The incident stuck in Songra’s mind, and he decided to build something in the future that would make other parents capable of screening disorders. He started early by learning Android programming at 16, as he felt technology could bridge the gap. Launched in February, the MyChild app is for kids aged between 11 and 24 months.

But this isn’t Songra’s first app. The young gun, who is a computer application student in Bhopal School of Social Sciences, has also developed Studiebay, an aggregator of coaching classes in his city. He also built a calculator for his dad (who is a businessman) to compute value added taxes (VAT). MyChild, of course, remains the closest to his heart.

“I don’t want any parent to face what mine did,” he says.

Free from developmental disorders

Today, MyChild gives advice based on your answers on a questionnaire.

The app asks parents to fill out the physical details like weight, height, and age of the child, followed by entering specific details pertaining to his/ her growth over the years. For example, if a boy does not hold his head steadily between one and four months, raise himself to a sitting position between four to 11 months, or stand up by a piece of furniture before he turns a year old, MyChild will suggest that the kid get physiotherapy and work on his ability to balance using orthopedic machinery under a qualified physiotherapist.

It also skims through details like the ability to smile and speak mono-syllables, then double-syllables, and finally words and sentences. The app is mainly aimed at early identification and intervention.