Kentucky is among the worst states in the U.S. when it comes to the number of child maltreatment cases.

Sometimes even for doctors, it can be hard to know if a bruise is just an accident or something way worse.

Now, a tech company in Louisville has created an app that's helping doctors spot signs of child abuse.

Elle Kast is a mobile app that we've developed in partnership with Dr. Mary Clyde Pierce, who is a premier expert in the field of child abuse and it's a tool for clinicians to use to screen children for child abuse.

So if a clinician is suspicious that a child, they see an injury on a child and they think maybe this kid's being abused, they can open up the app, plug in some information, and the tool will tell them, yes, that injury is likely because of abuse or actually it's probably an accident.

As a clinician, what you need to do is look over the child and see kind of do an exam and see what bruises they have and say, Oh, there's a bruise on the ear.

Say there's a bruise on the cheek in this area, in this area and say on the chest, the apple.

Then answer a few more questions and then it will show you the results.

And the results will tell you, you know, likely abuse, likely accident and determine it.

And it's based on research that's been peer reviewed and published by Dr. Pierce.

She actually created the ten four rule, which is one of the early child abuse rules, where basically if you're a kid and you have a bruise on your torso, ear or neck, and you're under four months of age, it's about a 95% chance those bruises are from abuse.

You know, if you think about a kid with a bruise under four years of age, you know, toddlers have bruises all the time, right?

They're running around.

They're running into things.

They're running into chairs, falling off things.

And so bruises often you don't you don't think, oh, that's a sign of abuse.

But what's really great about this app is that all the data is based around bruises and everybody has biases, right?

Even if you're perfectly decent person, you just have these built in biases.

So if you're a clinician and you're unsure if your kid's being abused, this tool empowers you to have that information.

So not only will it just tell you the results say this is likely accident, likely abuse, they'll actually show you the statistics as new data is published, we can add it to the app.

As a user, you just get the latest version and then you have it.

We've collected a lot of feedback along the way from clinicians and it's been very positive.

Clinicians want something where they can.

They want another tool that will help support, you know, support them in their job because this is a serious issue.

They want to help kids.

They can download the app.

It's free.

They can just enter and it takes maybe 2 minutes to get through and they can have now more data to support whatever decisions they make.

Good information there.

The CEO of Slingshot says the app took ten years to develop, most of which was spent gathering research for the app.

The research was based on more than 2000 patients.