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Good practice Imported

CognitiveBotics — AI Therapy and Learning Platform for Autistic, ADHD and Down-Syndrome Children in Hyderabad

India · Hyderabad · See the India profile · See the Hyderabad profile

Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 81% 33/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

An Indian start-up's AI platform builds individualised speech, behavioural and social-emotional learning plans for neurodivergent children; a 12-month, company-funded Hyderabad study reported large gains for 35 children but used only 5 untreated controls.

35 children
Children followed on the platform (12 months)
5 children
Untreated comparison group size
15 %
Reduction in CARS autism-severity scores
46-60 %
Gains in social age, developmental age and receptive/expressive language

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
CognitiveBotics Technologies Private Limited, with Rainbow Children's Hospital and CARE Hospitals
Period
2023–2025
Keywords
special education, assistive technology, autism therapy, ADHD and neurodivergent support

Context

Families of neurodivergent children in India, including those with autism, ADHD and Down syndrome, often face long waits and high costs for specialist speech, occupational and behavioural therapy, and CognitiveBotics, a Hyderabad start-up founded by parents of a child with autism, built an AI-based eLearning platform to extend and monitor therapy between clinical sessions for children aged 2 to 18.

Objectives

The platform was designed to use AI to generate individualised, gamified learning plans across speech, occupational, behavioural and social-emotional domains, letting therapists remotely track each child's progress and adjust the plan, developed with and used alongside clinical teams at Rainbow Children's Hospital and CARE Hospitals in Hyderabad.

Activities

A 12-month observational study published in JMIR Neurotechnology (April 2025) followed 35 children using the platform alongside continuous therapy and compared their outcomes against a 5-child untreated comparison group.

Results

The study found statistically significant improvements versus the untreated comparison group, including a 15% reduction in CARS autism-severity scores and 46-60% gains in social age, developmental age and receptive/expressive language.

Conclusions

The study was funded and sponsored by CognitiveBotics itself, with its lead author sitting on the company's advisory board and its corresponding author a company employee, a conflict of interest disclosed in the paper; the tiny control group and lack of independent replication mean these results should be read as promising but unproven rather than confirmed.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — No public pricing disclosed; the platform requires ongoing clinical partnership with hospital-based therapists rather than a one-off purchase.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Platform developed 2023; 12-month evaluation study published April 2025.
Staffing & skills
CognitiveBotics platform team, Clinical therapists at Rainbow Children's Hospital and CARE Hospitals

Conditions for success

  • Platform used alongside, not instead of, continuous clinical therapy
  • Remote therapist tracking allowing individualised plan adjustment

Common failure modes

  • Efficacy study funded and sponsored by the vendor itself, with a disclosed conflict of interest through its lead and corresponding authors
  • Comparison group of only 5 untreated children with no independent replication

Where it fits

Governance type
start-up platform co-developed with private hospital clinical teams
Scale
35 children across partner hospitals in one city
Income level
lower-middle-income

Replication kit

Reusable artefacts from this practice — as published by their sources.

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Data sources

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