Developmental screening is a standard part of early pediatric care in Japan, but such regimes are exceedingly rare in Southeast Asia. Recognizing a virtually unexplored field and a vital unmet need, TOY EIGHT Holdings Inc., a Japanese company with offices in Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has launched a bold venture in the field of early childhood developmental screening in Southeast Asian markets. What spurred CEO ISHIBASHI Masaki into action was his own experience with this issue as a parent. “Developmental screening in Southeast Asia suffers from a lack of personnel and expertise,” he says. “We determined that digitalization was the only way to make screening readily available.”

After developing digital tools that “gamify” screening for children, TOY EIGHT launched its developmental screening service in March 2022. As of summer 2025, the service has been used with more than 10,000 children, and the tools are available in English, Malay, and Indonesian. The procedure is simple: a smartphone is placed on a folding stand, and children answer questions that appear on the screen in the form of a game. The target age range is three to five years. As the children play the game, their fine motor skills, speech, and cognition are analyzed and scored using AI. Unlike a visit to a doctor or nurse, the entire process feels like an extension of everyday play, so children do not grow anxious or nervous. This has resulted in a completion rate of over 95%.