Giving a Voice to the Voiceless

SURGICAL RESIDENT Works to Give

VOICE TO THE VOICELESS, Literally

ANDREW PRINCE, ’14

ANDREW PRINCE

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

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Imagine that you wake up in a hospital bed, groggy, confused.

You try to ask a nurse what’s going on. But you can’t. The breathing tube in your throat means you can’t talk. Can’t make a sound. What do you do? You freak out, of course. Voicelessness strikes a million people a year. Although it’s usually temporary, it can be frightening, maddening, even dangerous. Answering medical questions by scribbling on a notepad leaves both patient and caregiver frustrated. Patients may be misunderstood or provide incomplete information. Dr. Andrew Prince ’14 aims to ease the terror and improve the communication. He came to Spring Hill from Slidell, Louisiana. After graduation, he received his medical degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is now an otolaryngologist (ENT) resident for UNC Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He’s also CEO of a start-up company called LiRA. That’s pronounced “LEERuh,” and it stands for Lip Reading Assistant. LiRA (liraglobal.com) is developing software to be downloaded to a smartphone or tablet. The software would read the patient’s lips via the device’s camera.

“You would just start ‘speaking,’” Dr. Prince said, “and then an artificial intelligence-generated voice would translate those lip movements into words through the device’s speaker.” Voicelessness usually results from a tracheostomy — insertion of a breathing tube into the throat. That can relieve a variety of breathing problems, even save lives. But it redirects airflow away from the vocal cords. “As an ENT, we’re constantly taking care of patients that have breathing issues and ultimately require some type of procedure that precludes voice,” Dr. Prince said. “I had a hard realization my first year of training about just how significant that is.”

A woman was airlifted from western North Carolina to UNC Health because of increasing breathing difficulties. She woke up after a tracheostomy, with no family members or friends at her side, and learned that she had throat cancer. “It just precipitated a panic attack,” Dr. Prince said.

He felt helpless. “I’m a pretty chatty guy myself,” he said. “Seeing somebody lose their ability to speak and how it affects them psychologically kind of blew me away.” From his education at Spring Hill and the Jesuit tradition of cura personalis, he had taken to heart the notion of caring for all aspects of his patients — mind, body and spirit. In 2020, he and a team of four other graduate and professional students at the University of North Carolina founded LiRA to help do just that. LiRA is currently teaching its software how human lips form certain phrases that patients often use to communicate with their caregivers. You can give it an assist; see the accompanying story for details.

Dr. Prince has chosen a career of serving others. If LiRA works the way he hopes, he’ll be able to do a better job of that. Still, he can’t help but feel that he’s the one being served. “You get so much out of it. Getting to take care of patients is a true gift. I just love the banter with patients and being able to help them.”

Help the Voiceless Speak

You can help teach the LiRA software how to read lips. If you have a computer with a camera and a microphone, you can participate in a volunteer campaign called LipTrain.

Simply go to liraglobal.com/liptrain. You’ll be asked to read 100 short sentences, including “my throat feels sore,” “I want to go home” and “when will the tube come out?” It takes just a few minutes, and you’re potentially helping Dr. Andrew Prince ’14 and his team at LiRA make life easier for future patients who will have lost their ability to speak.

SPRING/SUMMER 2022