Extensive and costly training and experience is required for therapists to be proficient at providing manual stimulation and assessment of orofacial activity. Further, devices physically wired to a computing device require the relocation of a patient to a position proximal to the computer, which may be difficult or ill-advised for neonatal patients, or relocating the computing device near the patient. To ameliorate these drawbacks, disclosed embodiments provide a method for assessing a non-nutritive suck of a patient using a handheld device comprising a non-nutritive suck assessment system, the method comprising actuating a control button to initiate execution of a non-nutritive suck assessment application on a processor of the handheld device; contacting a pacifier engaged to the handheld device with the patient; sensing patient oral feeding activity at a data collection module of a non-nutritive suck assessment application, collecting patient oral feeding activity data at the data collection module of the non-nutritive suck assessment application; extracting at least one patient performance metric from the patient oral feeding activity data at a data analysis module of the non-nutritive suck assessment application and displaying patient performance data, the performance data based on the at least one patient performance metric on a display of the handheld device.
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