Cognoa Hires Vice President of Medical, Further Advancing Developmental Diagnosis Technology

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 14, 2017) - Cognoa, a digital health company revolutionizing how children with developmental delays are diagnosed and supported, today announces Sharief Taraman, MD as its vice president of medical and clinical. Dr. Taraman will lead the company's further clinical validation of Cognoa's child development software for payers and employers as well as the company's U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submission and approval process. This marks a new round of expansion for Cognoa, further cementing its leadership role in the machine learning in healthcare field.

"Our technology has the incredible ability to truly transform the way children with autism and developmental delays are diagnosed and supported by both specialists and general pediatricians," said Brent Vaughan, CEO of Cognoa. "Dr. Taraman is the ideal pediatric specialist to help us put our innovative technology into the hands of pediatricians, enabling them to better treat their patients and improve the health outcomes for children and their families."

Dr. Taraman currently serves as the assistant division chair of pediatric neurology and as a medical informaticist at Children's Hospital of Orange County. He is also an assistant clinical professor at the University of California Irvine. He joins Cognoa after the company's recent $11.6 million funding round, leading the charge for many of the clinical initiatives being put into place over the next several months. These initiatives include FDA submissions and approvals and additional clinical validation for Cognoa's machine learning technology.

With Dr. Taraman's expertise, Cognoa will continue to accelerate the development of its revolutionary technology, which empowers both parents and clinicians to determine accurate assessments and early intervention for children with developmental delays -- or provide peace of mind for those on track. Using a clinically validated assessment, proprietary machine learning technology and patient reported outcomes from parents, Cognoa is able to predict an autism diagnosis up to 13 months ahead of the national average.

"My passion is in learning the most effective ways to utilize technology in medicine, and Cognoa is one of the few companies doing it right," said Sharief Taraman, vice president of medical at Cognoa. "This team is dedicated to finding new innovations through scientific rigor and clinical validation. We are currently optimizing the assessment process for developmental delays, and then will focus on FDA approval for diagnoses and improving quality of life after diagnosis."

Cognoa can be accessed through employers' insurance plans, increasing employee productivity and lowering healthcare costs through earlier detection of child developmental delays and milestone tracking. To learn more about the science behind the program and to receive a 15-minute demo, please visit https://www.cognoa.com/employers.

About Cognoa:
Cognoa leverages machine learning and patient reported outcomes to revolutionize how parents and clinicians screen and support child development. Cognoa gives parents peace of mind and helps them take the right action at the right time to best support their child's development. Cognoa's assessment has been used by 300,000 families and has been validated in multiple scientific clinical studies. It is based on more than five years of clinical research and validation studies led by Dennis Wall, PhD, at prominent institutions including Harvard Medical School and Stanford Medical School.