Your Phone as a Brain Health Tool: How Mobile Apps Are Making Baseline Testing Accessible Everywhere

The smartphone in your pocket contains accelerometers, gyroscopes, high-resolution screens, and processing power that would have filled a research laboratory a decade ago. Concussion assessment apps are putting that technology to clinical use — and dramatically expanding who can access baseline testing.

Sway Medical

Sway Medical uses your phone’s built-in accelerometer to conduct FDA-cleared balance testing. The app guides users through the modified BESS protocol (three stances, eyes closed, 20 seconds each) while measuring postural sway with objective precision that exceeds subjective clinician observation. According to Sway Medical’s published validation data, the platform demonstrates good test-retest reliability in healthy participants. It takes about five minutes, can be administered remotely with real-time clinician observation via video, and is used by numerous collegiate athletic programs and the military (as documented in research published in PMC).

HitCheck

HitCheck offers rapid baseline and post-injury screening that can assess an entire team in under 20 minutes. It combines reaction time, memory, and balance assessments in a mobile format accessible to organizations without clinic-based resources.

ImPACT Baseline (at home)

ImPACT Baseline (BaselineTesting.com) allows home-based cognitive testing for $15–$20. The test takes 20–25 minutes on a computer (not a phone or tablet) and generates the same composite scores used by the clinical ImPACT platform. Results are linked to a Passport ID that any ImPACT-trained provider can access.

Advantages and trade-offs

The advantages of mobile platforms are clear: cost reduction (many apps are free or low-cost for the balance component), accessibility (especially for rural communities, military families, and underserved populations), and convenience (no clinic visit required for basic assessments).

The trade-off is environmental control — a baseline taken at home on a phone is inherently less controlled than one administered in a supervised clinical setting.

How we use mobile tools

At Headquarters, we incorporate smartphone-based tools as part of our multi-domain baseline battery and support remote testing for families who can’t access in-person clinic locations. Technology should expand access to brain health assessment, not limit it to those who live near a specialty clinic. For telehealth specifically, see can you do a baseline test over video call?

Frequently asked questions