Brief Report: Preliminary Feasibility of the TEDI: A Novel Parent-Administered Telehealth Assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms in the First Year of Life.

ABSTRACT

Families with early concerns about infant symptoms of ASD have limited access to experienced professionals for screening and guidance. Telehealth has been used to reduce access disparities in other pediatric populations and has shown promise in parent-implemented interventions for ASD. We investigated the feasibility of a novel level-2 telehealth assessment of infants' early social communication and ASD symptoms, the Telehealth Evaluation of Development for Infants (TEDI). Parents of eleven infants aged 6-12 months were coached to administer specific semi-structured behavioral probes. Initial feasibility, reliability, and acceptability benchmarks were met. These findings suggest the feasibility of screening infants via telehealth, and are supportive of further large-scale efforts to validate this method for longitudinal monitoring of symptomatic infants in community settings.