Researchers are on a quest to catch diseases like Alzheimer’s in their earliest stages. Now, a team in Tallahassee is developing a diagnostic tool that works on a smart phone.

Wendy Nader remembers when her mom started showing obvious signs of something wrong.

"She would repeat what she had just told me two or three times in one conversation," Nader said. "It was, you know, a huge red flag”, Nader said.

Then, Nader’s mom started getting lost as she ran errands near her home in Miami. It took more than a year for doctors to diagnose her with Alzheimer’s.

The solution to detecting this disease and others much sooner may be found in an application downloaded on your cell phone. Computer Science professor Gary Tyson is developing an app to measure subtle changes in a person’s walk.“What we’re looking for are long term changes," Tyson said. "If we see that your efficiency of your gait, your efficiency of walking, is degraded over a 6 month period, we think that if you have a degenerative disease, you’ll see that more so than if you’re just doing normal aging.”

Tyson’s team at Florida State University is still figuring out how to present that information to a patient’s doctor. In the meantime, a free version of the app could be available within six months.