North Texas children with cerebral palsy reach new milestones with help from therapy app

North Texas children who have cerebral palsy are reaching milestones once never thought possible, and their families credit the power of a new medical-based app that is changing lives.

Cerebral palsy is the most common motor disability in children and causes issues with movement, balance, and posture.

provides patients with on-demand, virtual occupational therapy exercises to help them achieve their goals in a modern way.

Seventeen-year-old Evvie has been using GoMove and has improved her mobility by leaps and bounds.

She’s now able to tie her shoes and wash her hair in the shower without assistance—two skills her mother, Jessica Gonzalez, says Evvie wasn’t able to do a few months ago.

"Every day she does it, she gets better and better and becomes easier, and we go through tons of shampoo and conditioner now with her gorgeous hair! We're just so happy she can do that, and it's because of the GoMove app."

GoMove stands for goal-oriented movement opportunity in a virtual environment.

"It's a mobile website that helps therapists and families set up home programs for individuals with cerebral palsy," said Scottish Rite clinical scientist and app co-creator Angela Shierk.

They created the program as a component for other clinical trials, but Shierk says the success in those trials led to demand for the program on its own.

"Our hope is that it increases access to evidence-based care for children with cerebral palsy. It can be used as a tool that hopefully makes the therapy process more efficient and just gives people access that may not have access, or even using it through a telehealth model, gives therapists a tool to use that's already created so they don't have to spend that time doing it," said Shierk.

The program, she says, eliminates travel time, in-person sessions and duplicating exercise programs that already exist. It can also be customized for specific goals.

Evvie’s next goals are folding laundry, putting her hair in a ponytail, and prepping coffee—skills that Jessica says she wasn’t able to learn as quickly in traditional occupational therapy.

"It was usually just for functional skills that pertain to school, like using scissors or a pencil or things like that, but not self-care and not for things that you need at home. This was a game changer for us," says Gonzalez.

Evvie says she’s proud of herself and is excited about learning new skills that will help her at her first job at a local coffee shop.

"I think I'm very excited about handling coffee, because, like, that's going to be my task," said Evvie.

Shierk says they hope to finish a "feasibility and acceptability" study on the app and to have at least 20 participants across different sites.

Then they'll move into a randomized trial to look at the effectiveness of the program, which comes in three languages, including Spanish.