Ksana Health Selected to Support the Next Stage of the Landmark ABCD Study

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the history of the United States. They have selected the Ksana Health EARS Research Platform to support the second major stage of the study to provide an integrated system to help understand how adolescents use their mobile phones and the impact of the devices on their brain development and mental health.

 The EARS platform stood out for its ability to automatically and objectively collect data without creating extra burden for our participants. This is critical so we can give clear, scientifically grounded advice to parents, educators, and teenagers themselves about the impact of phone use on healthy development.” said Dr. Susan Tapert, ABCD Associate Director (Assessments)

Launched in 2015, the ABCD study is following nearly 12,000 youth, including 2,100 who are twins or triplets, for at least 10 years starting at ages 9 to10. ABCD is an NIH-supported, multi-institute research program that will generate robust data about how young brains mature. The study recently announced $290 Million in new funding to follow the children into important transitional periods of middle school and high school where device usage increases dramatically.

Needless to say, we are extremely excited to support this major study with our research platform. The selection of EARS by the ABCD study in addition to new projects with researchers at Duke University, University of California Irvine and the Children’s Hospital of Bern, Switzerland validates our approach to integrating project management, data collection, data storage and analytical services in one integrated approach. This means that researchers can launch projects more quickly, manage more efficiently and gain the lessons and insights with lower effort.

See the full press release on the relationship here.