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Our projects

Our projects

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Our ongoing activities include

  • researching studies and new information on ADHD in order to expand the website’s knowledge
  • the dispatch of addresses and the incorporation of feedback on these
  • regular maintenance and troubleshooting of the existing technology

We are also planning and pursuing the following projects (in descending order of priority), among others.
In addition to Ulrich Brennecke, more than 15 other people are currently actively involved in the creation, maintenance and organization of ADxS.org. In addition, the advisory board currently comprises 21 people.

We want to remain independent of advertising and continue to offer a free and open information portal and forum on the subject of ADHD.
We do not accept donations from pharmaceutical companies.

Please support the operation of ADxS.org and our projects with a donation:
Donate here.
Donations to the non-profit organization ADxS e.V. are tax-deductible in Germany.

1. Directly for you: Frontend projects

We call frontend projects those projects that are directly visible and usable for readers. Back-end projects (see below), on the other hand, tend to concern the internal infrastructure and tools for the team.

1.1. ADxS app for iOS and Android

We are developing a cell phone app to support the dosing and intake of ADHD medication and to record correlations between activities and ADHD symptoms.

  • Medication timer
    • Support for multiple receipts per day
    • Consequences timer automatically from time of first intake
    • Rebound-Warner
  • Medication sets
    • Sets of different medications
    • freely configurable depending on the day of the week or occasion (e.g. vacation)
    • Medication timer in a set
  • Support for the dosing of ADHD medication
    • Intake documentation
    • Symptom development documentation
      • Suggestion of symptoms to be monitored from symptom test
      • Active monitoring of symptom development
    • Daily event documentation
    • Evaluation for the visualization of medication intake for symptom development
  • Medication reorder reminder
    • Calculation of how long the existing medication will last
    • Reminder to reorder in good time

Long-term goal:

  • Evaluation of which active ingredients / preparations improve which symptoms and how well

Highest data protection by design

  • no personal data: no e-mail address, no IP address, no name

Stage:

  • Start of development winter 2024/2025
  • First version (not all features yet) planned for 2026
  • Gradual further development over several years

The development turned out to be more difficult than expected, especially in the hardware-related areas.
For example, iOS has only allowed an app to trigger an alarm clock, as required for the medication alarm clock, since iOS 26.

1.2. ADxS research AI bot

  • AI bot for internal research, trained with all available documents on ADHD
  • Support for searches whose results are published on ADxS

1.3. Address collection of practitioners and diagnosticians for ADHD

There is a glaring shortage of doctors and psychotherapists who treat or diagnose ADHD. People with ADHD sometimes wait over a year for an appointment.
Many doctors and therapists are well informed. However, we also frequently receive reports of drastic misrepresentations about ADHD, which can lead to people with ADHD not receiving the appropriate treatment. With a reduction in life expectancy of 8 to 11 years, around 4 times the risk of depression and anxiety disorders and a number of other massive consequences of untreated ADHD, this is highly dangerous.
We are therefore constantly working on improving and expanding the address database, sending out addresses to people with ADHD and entering feedback on the addresses.

1.4. ADxS video podcast

We have started preparations for an ADxS video podcast.
We now regularly record video podcasts here to shed light on interesting topics relating to ADHD in dialog or interviews.
As usual with ADxS, we look at individual topics in more detail.

As soon as we have collected a reasonable number of videos, we will publish them.
This video series will then be expanded regularly.

1.5. ADxS online coaching

ADxS plans to provide an online platform for trained coaches and therapists.
The online group coaching sessions and online group therapies are offered and delivered by appropriately qualified coaches and therapists.
ADxS will not offer coaching itself.

The aim is to reduce the considerable shortage of coaching and therapy places.
We want to offer people with ADHD who live in rural areas or who cannot find a qualified coach or therapist nearby an alternative.
We hope to offer favorable entry opportunities through appropriate group offers.
In addition, it should be possible to cover very specific topics in group coaching sessions for which there may not be sufficient demand locally.

1.6. Links in the forum to suitable ADxS.org articles

With 17,100 users (as of 01/26), adhs-forum.adxs.org is one of the largest German-language forums on the subject of ADHD.

In each thread, links to thematically relevant pages of ADxS.org are already displayed in the opening post. This makes it easier to find reliable information and sources on the topics or questions raised.
Through the links, knowledge from ADxS.org grows into the forum. The knowledge accumulates among the more experienced users and is passed on by them to newer users.
This increases the level of knowledge and the quality of discussion in the forum.

In February 2026, we significantly improved the fit of these links.
The next step is to display the links to each post so that ongoing discussions can also quickly access relevant knowledge.

1.7. Add graphics to ADxS.org texts

ADxS.org is rich in information.
We want to make these easier to understand by using graphics.
We are already working with a graphic designer on this.
Unfortunately, this work is very time-consuming.

1.8. Professional reviews

We are constantly looking for experts who are willing to review the contents of ADxS.
So far, the following chapters have been examined by a psychological psychotherapist:

  • Origin
  • Symptoms
  • Consequences
  • Stress

We want to have all chapters reviewed by several experts.

1.9. Translation reviews

ADxS.org is created in German. The English language version is created using Deepl.
We work with native English speakers to optimize the translation into English.
We are also in talks with professional translators for support.

We are also seeking contact with native speakers of other languages in order to make ADxS.org available internationally:

  • Mandarin Chinese
  • Hindi (India)
  • Spanish
  • Arabic
  • French
  • Bengali
  • Portuguese
  • Indonesian

The time required per language is around 20 to 30 hours. No previous medical or psychological training is required.

1.10. Online tests

1.10.1. Further online tests

We want to continuously expand the ADxS.org test battery.
An online screening for histamine intolerance is currently in preparation.

1.10.2. Cache online tests

Although the ADxS online tests are not medically validated screenings, some of them are quite extensive. The V5 symptom test comprises 169 questions and takes just under half an hour to complete.
With the technology currently in use, the content is lost if the Internet connection is lost during editing.
We want to modify the tests so that entries are always saved temporarily to prevent data loss.

1.11. Graphic gradation for reader groups

With 1.5 million words on 435 published pages (as of January 2026), ADxS.org is probably the most comprehensive monograph on ADHD in the world. It is certainly not the best - there are good reasons why a specialist book of this size would cost several hundred euros. ADxS.org is a collection of relevant information. The summarization and evaluation of the respective topics will still require several years of improvement.
Well, we have time - and goals ;-)

However, there is no longer a common (in the sense of: usual) form of presentation for structured content for these volumes of text, especially as ADxS.org has set itself the goal of being equally readable for different reader needs (beginners, advanced users, experts, scientists). For comparison: as of January, the German-language Wikipedia has around 3 million pages with a total of around 6 billion words. Wikipedia is not structured.

We want to avoid distributing the content to different web addresses, as each new piece of information would then have to be entered in several places. That would simply no longer be feasible.
Instead, we want to differentiate the content graphically. At present, we favor different colored backgrounds to indicate which reader’s prior knowledge the respective text is aimed at.
This requires a comprehensive expansion of the existing editor system.

1.12. Reading aid (similar to Bionic Reading)

Bionic reading is a generic term for a specific graphic form of presentation for text that makes it easier to read. More on this under Reading aids on the page Everyday strategies for people with ADHD in the Treatment chapter.

Many people with ADHD benefit from such a presentation.
There are free bionic reading add-ins for the most common browsers. However, these must first be installed by the readers. Not all users know how to install add-ins.
In addition, 70% of our readers read ADxS.org on their cell phones, for which such add-ins are not available.
Above all, however, the bionic reading add-ins we tested make the ADxS.org pages very slow (perhaps due to their size).

For meaningful use, it would therefore be helpful to have a graphic presentation in your own CSS, which can be activated on the website itself if the reader wishes.

1.13. Comments and discussion directly on the content on ADxS.org

It would be nice if discussion threads could be linked directly at the point of a text from ADxS.org that concerns the discussion.
So far there is no technical solution for this.

Comments and forum threads are currently only possible at the bottom of web pages.
We have an idea of how this could be implemented technically.
However, implementation will be costly, which is why this project is quite low down the list of priorities.

1.14. Comparison view “Changes since…” on ADxS.org

ADxS.org is not something you read again regularly due to its depth of detail and volume of text.
ADxS.org is constantly being expanded and improved.

For people with ADHD with more specific problems, experts and scientists, it could be helpful to make all changes made since a date that can be set by the reader graphically visible on a page. The display should then look like Word’s revision mode: The text that has been added since a pre-settable date is displayed in color and underlined, text that has been deleted since then is displayed in color and crossed out.

1.15. Web/document search with word graph / co-occurrence graph

We would like to open up the specialist information/source texts available to us by means of co-occurrence graphs (word graph/word cloud) in order to make content-related connections visually tangible via the overall search result.
From advice on whether (and if so how) this can be implemented with existing tools to the programming of a corresponding display, everything would be welcome.

Example of a word graph

1.16. Solver application for neurophysiological processes (MATLAB?)

We would like to experiment with mapping neurophysiological processes in a solver structure.
It would be interesting to see to what extent MATLAB or another existing solver could be suitable for this. We would like to talk to someone who is familiar with MATLAB or other solver software.
Knowledge: MATLAB or other solver software.

We took the first steps towards this project in 2025 with a property database and established its fundamental suitability.

2. Behind the scenes: Backend projects, strategic issues

The technology behind ADxS.org is much more complex than it appears from the outside. After our requirements threatened to blow up WordPress and there was no off-the-shelf CMS with which the requirements of ADxS.org could be easily implemented, the creation of our own CMS was a complex but future-proof solution. We are currently able to use it:

  • Multilingualism
    • time-controlled automated translations
    • Creation in one main language
    • different text content for different languages
  • Footnote database
  • Glossary management
  • Two separate user administrations
    • without mail connection for test accounts (radical data protection by design)
    • With mail connection for forum accounts
  • Online tests
    • complex question constellations (partly conditional)
    • complex evaluations
    • Connection to test account
  • Autosaves (protection against data loss when editing posts)

The following projects relate to the further development of the technical infrastructure.

2.1. Editor display of footnotes

ADxS.org attaches great importance to providing detailed information from directly accessible sources.
ADxS.org currently provides 13,707 footnotes to 9,789 different sources. Around 95% of all sources are primary literature (studies, reviews, meta-analyses) and are directly linked so that they can be accessed from within the text. If you move the mouse over a footnote symbol in the text, the mouseover shows the linked source.

The editor in which the ADxS.org texts are created and edited does not display footnotes as footnote symbols as on the website, but instead displays the complete footnote. This breaks up the text.((This then looks as if this italicized text is the footnote that proves the respective statement. And this is the link that belongs to the footnote. Many titles are much longer, so that footnotes are on average about this long.))((It becomes even more confusing if several footnotes support a statement. Then there are several footnotes like this one in a row. And this is the link that belongs to the footnote. We’ll leave it at an example with two footnotes for one statement) To make it easier to edit the text, the editor should have the same display as the website. This requires additional tools to be able to incorporate and edit footnotes.

2.2. Footnote database from ADxS.org

ADxS.org currently (as of January 2026) has 14,404 different sources integrated in 19,435 footnotes.
The database should be cleaned of duplicates (identical entries in different spellings).

2.3. Number page headings automatically

If an additional outline heading is inserted on a page, the numbering of all subsequent headings must be adjusted manually.
This is time-consuming and error-prone. We would rather invest this time in content research.

2.4. Search-replace tool for whole pages / all pages

Sometimes terms must or should be adapted to a certain spelling across all pages. This currently involves laborious manual work.
A cross-page replacement tool would save us a lot of time and help to improve the consistency of terms on all pages.

2.5. Multi-author system with change history and approval

The editor does not yet have a rights system that allows different authors to write content for ADxS.org and for changes to be tracked or approved by others.
Until now, external authors have sent their texts by e-mail. These texts must then be entered by us.
It is clear that the number of authors will increase. In order to meet this demand and not hinder the maintenance of ADxS.org content, we need an extension of ADxS.org with an author rights system (similar to a wiki).

2.6. Management

ADxS readership is growing every year. In January 2026, we had 122,000 unique readers on the website and a further 174,000 unique readers in the German-language forum.
The number and size of projects planned and being implemented is also growing.
The necessary organizational effort is growing at the same rate and has now reached a level that requires professionalization. At the end of 2026 or beginning of 2027, ADxS is therefore expected to create its first paid management position on the basis of a mini-job.

2.7. Expand advisory board

The Advisory Board has grown to 22 members in 2025.
We are aiming to expand the Advisory Board to 40 to 50 experts.

3. Last implemented

2026/01: Address feedback entered

In January 2026, almost 1,000 feedbacks were entered into the address database.

2026/01: ADxS web AI bot renewed

The previous AI bot had changed its interface.
A new AI bot with more manageable interface technology was developed and put live.

2026/01: ADxS search engine renewed

We updated our search engine in January 2026. As a result, it is now possible to search for several terms cumulatively in pages as well as in page segments (sections of pages separated by H2 headings).
The search result can therefore be controlled much more precisely.

2025/12: ADxS.org menu structure optimized for cell phones

70% of readers visit ADxS.org on their cell phone.
The menu structure is suboptimal for cell phones. After selecting a chapter in the menu, the menu does not remain expanded so that the individual pages contained in the chapter are not visible. To see these, the menu must be clicked a second time. Readers who are not familiar with the scope of ADxS.org may get the impression that the summary/introduction page has been the entire content of the chapter.
In the fall of 2025, the menu was redesigned so that it remains fully visible from a cell phone when a chapter is clicked on for the first time.

2025/12: Optimize donation banner

The technology of the donation banner was outdated and received a modern update that allows more text and displays the payment fields directly in the banner

2025 Address database expanded to include autism

On request by e-mail, we will send - step by step against the promise of later feedback on contacted addresses - the 90 addresses of doctors and psychologists who are or could be working on ADHD closest to a given zip code.

The mailing figures from the ADxS address database are doubling every year:

  • 2020: 99
  • 2021: 243
  • 2022: 599
  • 2023: 2.749
  • 2024: 4.500
  • 2025: 4.900

Based on the mailing figures for 2026 to date, it is expected that around 6,000 address inquiries will be answered in 2026.
In order to send these volumes of address mails, it was necessary to develop complex software to support us, even though we continue to process each request personally.

At the end of 2025, we expanded the address database to include the diagnosis and treatment of autism. As soon as we have enough data here, we will also enable filtering for this.

2025 Enter address feedback

The feedback returned by the address recipients was entered into the database completely manually in the first few years.
In view of the growing number of address shipments, this is no longer possible.

In addition, the feedback rate was initially - shall we say - improvable.
To this end, we have developed an address form in which users can enter their feedback.

To make it even easier to provide feedback and enter it into the database, we have expanded the form so that it can be accessed via a link that is attached to each address sent. This means that only the feedback needs to be entered instead of a complete address.

Around a year and a half after sending the address, we remind you every 6 months of the promised feedback, as this can save lives, as described above.
This required the development of a complex mail dispatch control system.

Nevertheless, we continue to receive feedback simply by e-mail. Some users are able to read a table, but are apparently not prepared to enter their feedback in it.
This feedback previously had to be entered manually by an employee, as otherwise hundreds of pieces of feedback would have been lost.

At the beginning of 2025, the feedback form was also expanded with the conversion of the address database to make it easier to provide feedback and save ADxS costs.

2025/01: Address feedback entered

In January 2025, 350 feedbacks were entered into the address database.

2024/12: ADxS web AI bot

We have developed an AI bot that can answer questions about ADHD as an alternative to searching the ADxS.org website, linking to the relevant sources at ADxS.org.

  • Ask questions to the ADxS bot
  • receive formulated answers
  • Answers including links to the relevant passages at ADxS.org as sources, for direct verification and further reading

2024/12: Optimize donation banner

The donation banner was given a visual donation status display and graphic improvements.

2024/11: Glossary as an alphabetical lexicon

ADxS.org uses many technical terms that require explanation, which are explained in the glossary.
If a technical term that is explained in the glossary appears in the text, the word is underlined. The explanation can be displayed with a mouseover while reading.
At the end of 2024, these glossary terms were also presented in alphabetical order as a keyword dictionary.

2024/11: Duplicate management added to address database

Since users can add addresses freely, it is unavoidable that addresses are created twice due to typing errors or name changes that only become apparent later.
As there are then several IDs of an address in the Ulaiuf for which users can give feedback, a duplicate management system had to be developed in order to be able to merge the addresses in such a way that readers can still give feedback on the consolidated address for each ID of the address.

2024/10: Address query extended by filter

In October 2024, we expanded the selection options so that you can select by category and target group when requesting an address:
Category: Doctors, psychotherapists, coaches, occupational therapists, speech therapists, clinics, outpatient clinics, others
Target group: children / teenagers, adults

In addition, the output format has been changed so that addresses are easier to read on a cell phone.

2024/10: English-language forum edition

While ADxS.org is available in German and English, the forum was limited to German for a long time.
Since Reddit does not allow links to websites in its forum, which would lead to technically correct answers becoming excessively long and would also create “duplicate content”, which would devalue ADxS.org in search engines, an English-language forum version was the logical consequence.
We also believe that a connection between the forum and ADxS.org has great advantages, because the knowledge from ADxS.org can grow into the forum and be passed on to newer users by more experienced users.
The English-language forum will also benefit from the links on ADxS.org.
We were finally able to recruit a native English speaker to moderate the English-language forum, so that the implementation of the English-language forum is now possible.

2024/10: Own server hardware

ADxS received its own server in October 2024. We were able to agree very favorable special conditions for hosting in a professional data center in Germany.
Due to the growth of the organization, it made sense to have a dedicated server to facilitate team collaboration.
Sending addresses is dependent on your own hardware and is not feasible with cloud storage.
A used, 2 1/2 year old Dual-Xeon with 64 GB memory including Windows server system, terminal server licenses, Exchange server and Office licenses was purchased.
The purchase was discussed with five IT experts from the Board of Directors, IT team and moderator team as well as with the cash auditor and was unanimously approved by all of them.

2024/08 ADxS address database expanded by 30,000 addresses

ADxS therefore collects addresses of and experiences with ADHD practitioners and diagnosticians so that people with ADHD can get an idea of their respective expertise.

By mid-2024, the ADxS address database contained around 2,500 addresses in Germany, 800 addresses in Austria and just under 300 addresses in Switzerland that were named to us as practitioners or diagnosticians for ADHD.
Over 700 new addresses were acquired in Germany in 2024.

In summer 2024, we collected more than 30,000 addresses of doctors and psychotherapists in Germany who could treat or diagnose ADHD according to their professional specialization in a large-scale project. We hope that this will drastically reduce the average waiting times for a diagnosis or treatment

2024/08 Advisory board communication

After solving a number of technical challenges, an internal communication forum for the Advisory Board was implemented in August 2024.

2024/08 Word mark ADxS

ADxS has become the most widely read German-language Internet platform for information on ADHD.
In order to prevent third parties from using the increasingly well-known name ADxS without authorization and thus misleading readers, ADxS was registered as a word mark for the EU and Switzerland in 2024.
The trademark was registered with WIPO in August 2024.

2024/05: SEO optimization of title and description

To improve the ranking of ADxS in search engines, the titles and descriptions of the pages must be optimized.
Furthermore, ADxS will continue not to create keyword-optimized texts, but will only publish content that makes sense from a technical point of view

2024/05: Search shows found section of a page

Some of the ADxS.org pages are very long, up to 60 or 70 DIN A4 pages.
If such a page is displayed in the results list of a search, the reader must search a second time for the page found.

The solution was to divide the pages internally into page sections that are searched separately from the search.
The result lists now link directly to the sections found, whereby these are shown within the complete page structure.

2024/05: Forum links show found section of a page

Thanks to the same technology, the links under first posts in a forum thread now point to appropriate page sections and no longer just to the respective pages of ADxS.org

2024/04: Dosing aid table

The dosing aid table, which is freely available to registered users in the download area of the forum, has been considerably expanded.

2023/12: Detailed evaluation for symptom test and external assessment test

The result of the symptom test and the result of the external assessment test can be downloaded as a detailed evaluation in PDF format.
The evaluation shows for each symptom which questions are evaluated and how they were answered by the respondent.
Although this does not turn the symptom test and external assessment test into diagnostic tools, it can open up a broader perspective for understanding one’s own behavior.

2023/04: Address dispatch AU and CH by zip code

Since April 2023, addresses in Austria and Switzerland have also been sent according to distance by a specified zip code,

2022/08: English edition of ADxS.org

Thanks to our own CMS, we can edit and manage all texts on a central page in one language (German). Texts that only appear in the English-language edition or only in the German-language edition are marked and maintained on the respective central page. This saves us having to maintain several pages.
The English-language edition is translated automatically. Even if the translation is not perfect, several native speakers who checked the texts did not immediately realize that it was an automated translation. A manual translation of the current volume (over 1.5 million words) would normally cost a six-figure sum. The effort required for regular maintenance and expansion of the texts would be prohibitive.
In this respect, the automated English translation may not be perfect, but it still exists. The only alternative would be: no translation.
In January 2026, around 20% of views were for the English-language version,

2022/01: WordPress replaced by own CMS

The scope and complexity of ADxS.org threatened to exceed the WordPress database.
Due to the impractical WordPress format, the WordPress test database was almost impossible to analyze even back then.
In addition, WordPress wanted to change the editor from a page editor to a block editor, which would have made it practically impossible to maintain the extensive pages of ADxS.
There were also a number of expansion requests that could only have been implemented to a very limited extent with WordPress.

After a long period of consideration between larger existing CMS and the option of a self-built CMS, the choice fell on the latter, which was developed under PHP with Laravel.
We haven’t regretted this decision for a second.

The editor was switched from HTML to Markdown in order to considerably reduce the previously massive effort for typesetting and design in the case of future print editions of ADxS.org.

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