Future watch
Speech therapy apps to help clinicians and their patients
I
n 2010, Sam Brady, a Speech & Language Therapist, was working at Frenchay Hospital, Bristol. She was working with a patient with Parkinson’s Disease whose speech was unclear due to its fast rate. She wanted to trial existing Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) technology to help him to speak more slowly but the existing DAF device was bulky, awkward to configure and not readily available. It was also expensive, making it unviable as an option for patients to purchase themselves and use as a long term help. Sam’s husband Garry, a software engineer at Hewlett Packard, listened to her frustrations and created a prototype of DAF on his Android phone. Within a few weeks, their app “DAF Pro” had been created. Sam and Garry continued to solve other clinical problems by developing further speech therapy apps. Speechtools was incorporated in 2014 and Garry has worked full time for the company since 2017. Sam designs and updates their apps and also continues to work as an NHS Speech and Language Therapist in Bristol.
product is over £1k, the app is priced at £9.99 making it readily available to clinicians and their patients. It has replaced expensive, standalone voice recording machines in Speech & Language Therapy Departments. Speechtools has been sent many messages and reviews showing that clinicians who use Voice Analyst in their clinics would be lost without
For the first time clinicians and patients can use the same clinical app to monitor and change their voice - particularly useful for those with Parkinson’s Disease or other neurological/voice conditions. People can see their pitch or volume on a screen and then play it back and look at the statistics about it. They can then aim to speak at a higher/lower pitch or volume, using the visual or statistic feedback as guidance and objective measurement.
it, and patients love being able to practice their voice exercises in the comfort of their own home to augment their speech therapy sessions. It is recommended by Parkinson’s UK. Voice Analyst has transformed the way Speech & Language Therapists work and Speechtools hopes to integrate it into patient records in the future, thus improving patient care throughout the patient pathways. Speechtools now has a portfolio of 5 apps, available on both Apple and Android, which are used by Speech & Language Therapists and patients in over 170 counties. Each app that they have created has been developed to solve a clinical problem and extended further following patient and clinician feedback. Their apps are now used by 10,000 people a month. Sam and Garry love combining their skills of speech therapy and technology and working in the exciting health tech field. It is a rapidly growing area that they have been proud to be part of from the early days of the smartphone. Current and future technologies will continue to enhance, improve and transform the way Speech & Language Therapists work and Speechtools is proud to be leading the field in this area.
The ‘Voice Analyst’ app records, analyses and stores the human voice and was awarded the 2020 South West Medilink Award for Health Tech Innovation. Originally, it was born out of a frustration with lack of access to and cost of the existing technology. Voice Analyst is the only app that accurately detects pitch of the human voice (not instrumental pitch), gives visual feedback and provides a clear, easy to use interface. Whereas the legacy hardware voice analysis
www.speechtools.co
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Issue 18
