Fredericton, NB (SkyNewswire.com) -- A recent study by the United States Center for Disease Control revealed an increase in autism incidence from 1 in every 166 children to 1 in every 150, confirming that the number of autism diagnoses is growing at an alarming rate in North America.
"The enormous need for autism services seems to be happening everywhere," said Cynthia Howroyd, President and CEO of Virtual Expert Clinics (VEC), creator of AutismPro, a 9-step online software program for guiding autism intervention. "Our program is currently available in English only, but we're getting responses from China, Italy, Poland… from all over the world. We will soon have to consider translations."
Recently, VEC offered AutismPro free of charge in a scaled down version called First Steps for a limited time. "We expected maybe a hundred or so people to sign up for our offer in the first month," said Ms. Howroyd. "But we had hundreds of people signing up from New York to Melbourne within the first few days we made it available."
AutismPro was authored by an international team of experts to support autism intervention with the understanding that few can access the help they need. It uses the power of the Internet and intelligent, interactive software to deliver their collective brainpower to homes world-wide at a fraction of traditional consulting and training models.
"We were also surprised by the demographic breakdown of the response," said Ms. Howroyd. "Parents accounted for only half of subscribers to our free trial, while educators and therapists accounted for most of the other subscribers. That means professionals, not just parents, are also actively searching for a solution to this crisis in services."
The AutismPro First Steps free release illustrates a beginning program for a young child with severe autism. It guides novices to autism with an intervention plan, printable activities and procedures, video demonstrations, and case studies.
"First Steps serves to illustrate a small part of the total AutismPro program," said Ms. Howroyd, "The full version of AutismPro has more than 10,000 pages of content and pulls from that database to make specific recommendations according to each child's profile and their unique skills and challenges."
As a result of the enthusiastic global response to the First Steps edition, Ms. Howroyd has decided to keep the 30-day free trial offer in place indefinitely as a means for parents, educators and professionals to evaluate the program before committing to the full version.
Internationally acclaimed autism researcher, Dr. Jeannette Holden, will be touring Australia with Ms. Howroyd throughout the month of March to present a series of workshops on AutismPro and related research finding. They'll also be looking for opportunities for a wide range of partnership. A workshop schedule has been posted at
http://www.autismpro.com/workshops_in_australia.
AutismPro First Steps is available through www.autismpro.com.
Sound bites and b-roll available at: http://www.prnewswire.com/broadcast/25175/consumer.shtml
About Virtual Expert Clinics
Since November of 2004, Virtual Expert Clinics has worked with an international group of autism experts to develop an approach to supporting services to children with special needs. Through a first-of-kind blend of clinical expertise, expert systems programming, and Internet-based delivery, VEC has taken a global leadership role in its first product offering: AutismPro. AutismPro is an online subscription-based program for providing immediate just-in-time guidance to professionals and parents of children with autism. The expert intelligence underlying the program allows them to develop and manage customized intervention plans for individual children. The program monitors each child's progress and plans evolve according to the child's changing needs.
Contact Info:
Thomas Mitchell
Media Relations Manager
Virtual Expert Clinics
46 Dineen Drive, Suite 347
National Research Council Building
Fredericton, New Brunswick
E3B 9W4
Phone: 506.474-8134
Toll Free: 866.462.0991
Web Site: www.autismpro.com
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