Cincinnati mother and son team up to create an app that helps stroke patients

WLWT highlighted the University of Cincinnati’s Pooja Khatri and her son Ajai Nelson who have collaborated to launch the NIH StrokeNet Trial Finder app. 

In 2021, the University of Cincinnati’s Stroke Team developed a flowchart to assist doctors in finding the right trial. Khatri, MD, thought it would be more user friendly as a mobile app, but she didn’t have the time or coding expertise to make that a reality. 

So Khatri turned to her son, Ajai Nelson, who had recently graduated from Walnut Hills High School and was preparing for his freshman year at Oberlin College. 

"It's pretty fun to be able to work with my mom on something like this," Nelson told WLWT.

"Words can't even describe it," said Khatri, professor, vice chair of research and division chief in the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at UC's College of Medicine; associate director of the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute; and codirector of NIH StrokeNet’s National Coordinating Center. "It is the most proud feeling."

A total of 29 institutions now utilize the app, and it has been used more than 250 times since Nelson began tracking that data in March 2024. If the app were retrofitted to the original flowchart UC was using, he noted it would now include 484 possible sets of studies and more than 10,000 possible routes within the chart. 

"It has been such a fun thing to do together," Nelson added.

Read or watch the WLWT story.

Read more about the mother-son collaboration.

Featured photo at top of Nelson and Khatri working on the app. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand.