LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A local company helped develop an app for medical professionals to help detect early signs of child abuse.

Louisville-based tech company Slingshot partnered with Dr. Mary Clyde Pierce, a medical physician with Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago who researches child abuse, to develop LCAST. 

The app begins with an assessment asking for a child's age and gender. From there, a diagram of a child is shown and a doctor selects the area(s) where bruising appears. Then, the assessment asks for other symptoms, reason for seeking care, who the caregiver was at time of injury, and if there is a delay in care.

Once the assessment is complete, the app takes that information, coupled with data from over 4,000 patients, to determine if a child's injuries appear to be accidental or from abuse.

"She's (Pierce) always had this vision where she wants to make data accessible," said David Galownia, CEO of Slingshot. "For us as Slingshot, one of the favorite things we do is if you can build technology that has an impact, it's really incredible."

Galownia said conversations to develop this kind of technology began about a decade ago.

"Dr. Pierce, she's really a pioneer in the field and an expert," he said. "The fact that we've been collecting data and working on this app, for you know, almost ten years, we've been very deliberate, we don't want to release something where, you know, it's giving wrong answers."

Slingshot said the app is meant to be a diagnostic tool, to help medical professionals consider what steps should be taken.

"It's to give you confidence that, 'Hey, this is definitely something that we need to look into further,' or, 'Conversely this is definitely something that is accidental and we don't need to put the parents or this child through all this stress,'" Galownia said. 

LCAST is meant for assessments on children under the age of four.

Both Slingshot and Pierce said judgement on if a child is abused is subjective, and hopes LCAST, using data-driven information, can help remove intentional or unintentional biases.

"They (medical professionals) can make a decision on, 'Hey, do I need to report a kid that could be potentially being abused to the authorities,' or, 'Am I just being overly suspicious because of some bias I have,'" Galownia said.

By removing biases, together Slingshot and Pierce hope LCAST helps doctors make better informed decisions before making life-changing alterations.

"The vision was really to collect some really good data on the subject, and then empower people with the technology so they can have that at their fingertips and just make better decisions," said Galownia.

While LCAST is available for anyone to download, it is intended for medical professional use.

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