Twin Cities startup gets Google support, starts study

Monika Heller and Kurt Roots

Can high-tech cubes and a not-so-exciting video game help diagnose attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD)?

Software developer Kurt Roots and Monika Heller, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, are betting on it with their startup, CogCubed.

The Minneapolis-based company last week launched a pilot study of its video game, called Groundskeeper. The study comes a couple months after Google awarded the startup $20,000 in support services.

The goal of CogCubed?s research, which will be conducted at Groves Academy, is to test whether Groundskeeper can help improve cognitive function in children who have ADHD.

The game is played using Sifteo cubes, which feature video displays and respond to shaking, tilting and pressure. The small cubes, developed at MIT, also can interact with one another. (See the video with this story to learn more about Sifteo cubes).

Roots was intrigued by the technology, and showed it to Heller (his wife), who saw an opportunity to use the cubes to assess and diagnose children who show signs of ADHD and other disorders such as Autism.

In the game, cubes are lined up near one another and children are asked to look for a gopher, which they can knock down using a cube displaying a hammer. Along the way, players are presented with distractions such as chirping birds that they?re told to ignore. The cubes collect data about how the children play the game and an algorithm helps make a diagnosis.

Groundskeeper is deliberately ?just boring enough? to achieve its clinical goals, Heller said.

?Without it being boring, you can?t see where the problems are," she said.

Katharine Grayson covers med tech, clean tech, technology, health care, and venture capital, and she writes the Innovation|Minnesota blog

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/vertical_36/~3/0589zL8a7x0/health-tech-startup-cogcubed-starts.html

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