NEW MSIAN UNIVERSITY SOFTWARE IDENTIFIES CHILD LANGUAGE DISORDER 100 PER CENT

PENANG (Malaysia), Jan 20 (Bernama) -- A team of researchers at Science
University of Malaysia (USM) has invented a world's first software support
system to assist medical practitioners identify language disorder in children.

University of Malaysia, acronym: USM) is a public university with its main
campus situated in Penang, a state in Malaysia, located on the northwest coast
of Peninsular Malaysia by the Strait of Malacca.

Team leader Dr Rozaida Abdul Rauf said the Clinical Language Disorder
Support System (CLDSS) software was developed at a cost of RM186,000 (US$55,283)
following research from December 2006 to November last year.

She said it was made possible through a combination of psycho-linguistic
skills and information technology (IT).

"The software can identify the exact cause of the language disorder in
children as young as one to six years old, before they start schooling," she
told a news conference, here.

She said a brain scan diagnosis would be conducted on the children to
identify the type of language disorder.

Dr Rozaida said that from the brain scan, the software would be able to
recognise the disorder in the child, before the case was referred to specialists
such as language pathologists for further action.

"Children with language disorders can be treated at a low cost if the
problem is identified early," she said, adding that their invention only
identified the problem but did not treat it.

She said the university had conducted tests on 30 children since the
software was developed.

"We were able to detect 30 different types of language disorder to help in
their treatment at hospitals.

"Hospitals can only identify the types of language disorder with 13 per cent
accuracy while we can identify them with 100 per cent accuracy," she said.

Dr Rozaida said parents also had to be sensitive to their children's
language development to prevent a situation where the disorder became difficult
to treat after the children had exceeded pre-school.

"Sometimes, there are four-year-olds who can only utter one word, while
others are just quiet, so this must be monitored to see if they are experiencing
language disorder.

She said that following the development of the software, the research team
would also conduct three projects to come up with a programme to treat language
disorder in children.

The software, which is in the process of being patented, is not yet
available in the market, but an IT company in Kuala Lumpur has stated its
interest in buying it, she said.

-- BERNAMA