Stardots and the future of objective mental health diagnosis

Obtaining an accurate psychiatric diagnosis is essential for effective treatment and a better quality of life for people with mental health issues. Currently, diagnosing autism, ADHD, anxiety, and depression remains complex and subjective.

Swedish startup Stardots aims to refine the diagnosis process for psychological illnesses. Stardots recently launched the beta version of their platform Psilmi™, which uses eye tracking to objectively evaluate a patient’s psychiatric predisposition in just 12 minutes with 90% accuracy.  

Stardots aims to refine mental health diagnosis 

Stardots is a Swedish company based in Uppsala, Sweden. They have teamed up with psychology researchers to commercialize their research findings. Their neurological tools aim to improve early and accurate diagnosis of various mental health conditions. The company started in 2021, initially focusing on Parkinson's disease. They needed an eye tracking partner, so they turned to Tobii for eye tracking solutions that were optimal for their needs.  

Today, Stardots has several assessment tools at various stages of development, ranging from early detection of Parkinson's to their tool Psilmi™, which assists practitioners in evaluating conditions such as autism, ADHD, depression, and anxiety.  

Diagnosing mental health is complex and subjective 

Diagnosing psychological conditions is often a subjective process. The clinician depends on the patient’s description of their symptoms and their personal judgment of how severe they are. It becomes a subjective task for the clinician to evaluate these responses, determine how serious the symptoms are, and decide which diagnosis fits best.  

Another challenge involves the patient’s belief in what's ‘right’ or ‘wrong'. How patients respond to questions about their psychological symptoms can be influenced by whether they think there is a morally correct answer. This makes it even harder to reach an accurate diagnosis and increases the risk of misdiagnosis.  

 In some cases, you can’t rely on the patient to describe their symptoms at all, such as with young children suspected of having autism. In these situations, it’s crucial to establish the correct diagnosis as early as possible. The earlier a person with autism receives proper treatment, the better it is for their long-term quality of life.  

Finding the proper diagnosis for these mental illnesses is difficult. For some conditions, like autism, many people might not get diagnosed, or their symptoms could be misunderstood, leading to other diagnoses such as depression or anxiety. On the other hand, for conditions like ADHD, diagnosis rates are often much higher than what research indicates they should be.  

Psilmi™ — an assessment tool for autism, ADHD, anxiety, and depression 

Stardots recently released the beta version of their application Psilmi™, an assessment tool designed to help practitioners diagnose autism, ADHD, depression, and anxiety more accurately. This solution was based on research by researcher Pär Nyström from Babylab at Uppsala University, where they have studied the biomarkers analyzed in Psilmi™ for over 20 years.  

The procedure involves positioning the patient before a screen and asking them to perform specific tasks within the Psilmi™ software. Using Tobii Eye Tracker 5L, eye-based signals are collected and analyzed, and the software provides an assessment of the patient’s scores on the scales of ADHD, autism, depression, and anxiety. The clinical trials conducted so far show results with approximately 90% accuracy.  

The pupillary changes during the tests are examined more closely in Psilmi™. Research has shown that the level of pupillary changes when the eyes are approached with a stimulus can indicate a person’s likelihood of psychological illness. The assessment considers 46 different biomarkers, and, through machine learning, Psilmi™ provides a 90% accurate result in just 10-12 minutes.  

What’s next? 

With Stardots’ Psilmi™ software in its beta stage, the company is offering its product to clinics for regulatory clinical trials to conduct confirmatory studies to demonstrate the statistical significance further. Stardots collaborates with clinics in Africa and Europe, including Sweden, and has attracted interest from a leading university hospital in the U.S. They expect FDA approval by the end of 2026 and plan to have the assessment service available two years from now to help practitioners diagnose patients.